


The Wandering Years

by leradny



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Survival, but the ending is happy!, like. 'whale rider' sad, very sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-11-05 01:55:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11003556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leradny/pseuds/leradny
Summary: Moana goes home instead of fighting Te Ka on her own, and takes her people in search of a new island. After ten years, they do not find one, but Maui finds them, and begs her to take him to Te Fiti one more time.





	1. Chapter 1

**THE WANDERING YEARS**

_Chapter 1: Going Home_

Tui and Sina have been searching the island for any sign of healthy green since dawn. Their hands are covered with the blight, a sooty substance, as they push aside pale brown plants and fruits split open to reveal rotten innards. When they kneel in the withered fronds, even Tui is nearly invisible.

At moonrise, a canoe with mended sails appears on the shore with the symbol of Te Fiti is on it--the missing boat, with their missing daughter. Sina stands at once, but Tui holds an arm out as he watches. Moana does not see them. She has a caution to her, letting out her sail so that the boat comes ashore with barely a whisper. This is not the daughter who had left them weeks ago, the girl with her shining hair, her loud laugh, and eyes full of stars. This is a joyless woman on their shore. Moana's hair is pulled up sternly, and her mouth is set as she looks at the withered remains of what used to be their island forest.

"Moana," Sina calls softly, and Tui lowers his arm. Nothing can stop a mother from looking after her child, even when the child has grown up. He misses his mother. She knew how to handle Moana in all of her moods.

Moana jumps, one foot on the boat and one hand on a line. When she finally sees them, her eyes fill with tears but she does not come ashore or let go of the boat, and Tui fears he will lose his daughter to the sea once more. But then Sina opens her arms, and Moana runs over, a child again. She cries into her mother's shoulder, and Tui comes up to hold both women. Moana's sobs are hushed as if she wants to be private, when the empty shore yawns before them.

"Don't tell them," Moana begs, and Tui's heart breaks at how small she sounds, how broken. "Don't tell anyone I'm here yet."

"We won't," Tui says. Pua shuffles onto the beach, sensing the sadness in everyone, and Moana hugs her beloved pet tightly.

\- - -

Moana stays on her boat for the night, and in the morning Tui and Sina arrive at the village counsel house as usual to find Moana sitting in the center, waiting for everyone to arrive.

"Moana!" someone cries. "She's back!"

"Welcome home!" someone says. But their cheers are halted when Moana stands up.

"I am back. I went out to deliver Maui across the great ocean so he would restore the heart of Te Fiti, and..." She swallows. "I failed. We fought Te Ka but we could not reach Te Fiti."

 _Maui, she met Maui,_ some people say.

 _Failed, even a demigod could not restore the heart,_ others whisper.

"Listen," Moana announces, and this is a command rather than a suggestion. "Yes, I failed to restore the heart of Te Fiti--but I know what I have done. I have sailed out beyond the reef and I have come back. There are fish out there. There are other islands. I have seen them. Motunui is dying, but we will not. We must go out across the ocean and find another island, as our ancestors did."

"But how long will it take?"

She holds her head high. "I don't know."

Silence.

"I think," someone else suggests haltingly, "I think the blight will pass. They always do. It has only been a few weeks. At the very least, we have fresh water to last us. We should stay here."

"Then stay." Moana stands up and walks out of the gathering house. Sina reaches out to stop her, but Tui shakes his head quickly as Moana goes on, "I will be in the cavern with the boats. Once they are fixed, we leave at the next high tide. A messenger will come back with news as often as possible."

It takes some weeks, less than Tui thought. The cavern boats are old, but they are strong and sturdy and made with such care that Moana decides to salvage sails and lines from their fishing canoes rather than take the lighter crafts. When the last sail is repaired and the last line replaced, all the people who wanted to stay come running into the cavern.

Tui smiles, but stops as soon as he sees the simmering anger on Moana's face. Everyone else sees it too. Even from behind Moana, they can see the tightness in the young chief's shoulders as she stands on the motherboat with a line in hand. She does not welcome their jugs of water or apologies. Tui's hand finds Sina's hand, and they both hope silently that this does not end the way they fear it will.

"We're sorry, Moana," the lingerers say.

If this had happened before Moana left, Tui knows she would have accepted their apology and let them on the boats.

This Moana watches the lingerers with stony eyes, hand clutching the rope as if it was a spear. Her red chief's cape and headdress gleam in the dark cavern like blood.

Tui knows exactly what she is thinking--that it is well within her right to leave them here on this dying island. Barring them from the boats could be a punishment for disobeying her, or a command to stay. For they had said they wanted to, and she had already extended her generosity allowing them to stay against orders. She could say they have only prepared for the people they knew were coming, she could say there is no room on the boats. And then everyone would know what happens when Moana is opposed.

It would be easier in this instance to be cruel. Only a few weeks as chief and the time has come for Moana to make a choice of what sort of chief she will be. She is sixteen and already hardened so much by things that Tui does not know. Which path she will choose, his daughter?

"Chief Moana, we beg forgiveness for disobeying you," they say, and bow low.

"We will be loyal," someone says. "From now on, we will never disobey you."

"We will be the most loyal!" they all say, some of them crying. "Please, Moana, please! Let us on a boat and we will follow you forever!"

It has never taken Moana this long to make a decision. When she makes a move to speak, a sharp thud echoes in the cavern and everyone jumps. Perhaps a dropped adze, a fallen log... but Moana looks to the drum on the motherboat. She lets her hand drop. Her shoulders ease down.

"You didn't disobey me," Moana says, and there is something like gentleness in her voice again. "I said you could stay. We have more than enough room for you all. I'll delay the sail until tomorrow while we prepare rations."

Sina leans her head on Tui's shoulder, crying in relief.

\- - -

Later that night, Tui searches for Moana. It is easier to find her now than when she was a baby. The boat marked with Te Fiti's symbol is least in need of repair, and as chief, Moana is technically captain of the motherboat. But she eats her meals on the little canoe more often than not, and many times alone, even without Pua. Though it is not a houseboat, she is not often bothered except by family.

"I got used to it," Moana told them with a slight smile. "And she knows me now."

There is a pouch of dried banana chips at Moana's side, her favorite snack. She feeds most of them to Pua with one hand, as she looks at a half-finished basket. Tui clears his throat, and Moana looks up and smiles. She is in a talking mood, then. Sitting down next to his daughter, patting Pua absently between the ears, Tui says what has been on his mind since this morning: "I am thankful for the choice you made today."

"It was the right thing to do," Moana says.

"It was the _kind_ thing to do," Tui tells her. "That is far more important than being right or wrong."

Moana looks down and wipes her eyes quickly. "It was so hard, though." Different things make her cry now. Though Tui sees her do it less often, he can see the signs of it almost constantly--red, puffed eyes and stained cheeks. A wilt to her posture. He misses the bright, confident daughter of before, if only because she was so much happier.

"So was sailing beyond the reef," he tells her. "So was sailing back. You are strong, my daughter. You will become even stronger than me one day. I hope you will continue to be kind." As kind as Tui was not, at his very worst. Moana sniffs and says nothing. He picks up the basket and starts finishing it for her.

Then she remarks, "You didn't burn the boats."

"Not for lack of trying," he tells her. "They were too wet to burn." She laughs, but a hard one. Tui thinks of telling her what actually happened, but it is late and Moana stands up before he can say something else.

"Good night, Dad."

"Good night, Moana." Father and daughter press their foreheads together. Moana picks up Pua with a yawn, making her way to the motherboat in the dark. Tui looks up at the sail, with the black spiral of Te Fiti, and presses his forehead to the mast. "Thank you for bringing her home."

He finishes the basket alone on the boat in a few minutes when a woman's voice echoes through the cavern, calling his name. It could not have been his mother--besides her being dead and buried weeks ago, the voice is far too young. Tui looks around, but finds no one besides a few men still in the cavern, and all of them are headed to sleep on their boats. Most of the boats have banked their fires and it is dark.

"Sina?" he calls, the first woman who comes to mind.

No one answers.

Tui stands and takes the basket with him to the motherboat, where Sina stirs a pot of yam in the small firepit. She hushes him with a smile as she gestures to their daughter, fast asleep with Pua sprawled on her stomach. He lowers his voice. "Did you call me?"

"No. Why?"

He shakes his head and unfolds a blanket. If it's important, he'll find out soon enough.


	2. The Water-Bearers

The question of water is a difficult one, even moreso than food, which Sina and Moana carefully safeguard against high waves and birds. What they have on their boats is murky with blight, though it is drinkable (if foul) when strained through cloth. They replenish fresh water at every island they can, too small to hold all of them for more than a few weeks. They store rainwater. But the journey wears on them when the water is low and another island with clean water is uncertain, and there are no clouds in the sky.

It is too hard on the sick, and the old, and the babies.

As Sina had feared, there are many heads shorn in grief the first few months. They do not want to bury their people on strange islands, or blighted islands, so they have burials at sea, wrapping the bodies in cloth or worn sails and lowering them from the motherboat.

Moana puts her hair up, dons her red cloak and headdress, and calls a meeting. "I see your suffering, my people. But listen--there is water all around us. If we just figure out how to take away the salt, we'll be able to drink it."

"But making salt gets rid of the water," someone points out.

"I will find a way," Moana tells everyone, and while she cannot say when, the people are willing to give her time.

Moana begins with what Sina has started. She strains a jug of seawater through the finest cloth they have, tests it, and finds it improved but still far too salty.

Moana tries leaving the lid on as she boils it for salt, but that only results in the cookpot boiling over.

To allow water to escape, Moana carves a hollow into the top of one wooden jug and sets a reed into the groove. Then, she puts a shorter jug underneath the reed. The saltwater, after a day left in the hot sun, has traveled from one basket to the other and turned clear. A paste of leftover salt is in the first basket. Moana instantly suggests boiling it to make the process go faster, but Sina reminds her that they must conserve fuel as well and it would not work to provide the whole village with water. Still, she is proud of her daughter.

Sometimes the water is lost or the salt ruined when the boat rocks, and the sheer amount of waiting is a concern. But she has found a way to collect fresh water when there is no rainfall or island in view. And salt as well will be replenished for preserving fish and meat. Moana teaches it to every boat and receives their thanks, then asks if there is a group of volunteers to become official water-bearers. They would be charged with storing the bulk of the village's fresh water and salt, as well as refining the system.

There is a big, comfortable, steady boat which might work, but it has been dubbed an unofficial playground for the children, who will most definitely knock the baskets over. A group of elders volunteers first. They have the patience required for coaxing salt away from water, yet Sina points out that their boats are too small and they would need help carrying the water themselves. Then, a group of boats sail up from the third circle, the ones who sail closest to the motherboat outside of Moana's family. They look familiar, and with a start Sina remembers--they are the people who tried to stay at Motonui.

"Thank you for volunteering," Moana says. "Is there anything you need to prepare your boats for the new task?"

"We don't know yet, Chief Moana." The self-appointed leader's name is Lupa. "We decided to volunteer first. We may need to switch boats or barter supplies for adjustments."

"Well, Lupa, ask for anything you need. If anyone complains, send them to me." She smiles. "When your boats are ready, come back and we'll make a plan."

"Yes, Chief."

"Oh, wait," Moana says, and they immediately halt. "Stay where you are in the third circle. It will be difficult to distribute water if you are on the very edges of the fleet, instead of near the middle."

"Yes, Moana. Thank you."

Moana pauses for a long time. When she speaks, it is quite uncharacteristically formal: "It is my duty as chief to provide for my people."

Since it does no harm, Sina does not ask, but she does wonder why Moana refused to say 'you're welcome'.

\- - -

The farmer Oni begs them to try farming coconuts and bananas, once the water-bearers are settled. Moana is hesitant about the lack of space for good soil, and how much work it takes. She turns to Tui and Sina, but they refuse their counsel. In the end, Moana allows Oni a portion from the water-bearers. On the next island they reach, they harvest soil for him. Despite the man's best efforts, the coconut trees wither after only a few weeks. The banana palms survive one year of fastidious tending, but the bananas themselves are so small and stunted that even Pua refuses to eat them.

Moana keeps a look of sympathy on her face until they return to the motherboat, and then she closes the door and bursts into laughter.

"I shouldn't have let Oni try it," Moana says, wiping her eyes. "Everyone knew it wouldn't work! And he was so disappointed."

Tui shakes his head. "You did the right thing. Oni is a stubborn man and hopeful, too. He wouldn't have listened to anyone telling him it was impossible."

Moana looks at him, startled, but then her mother says, "Well, he did grow bananas! It's just that they were very small." She giggles, and puts a hand over her mouth, but soon they start laughing again.

\- - -

On islands with friendly villages, Moana and her mother and aunts ask the herbalists for all of the edible, medicinal, or otherwise useful sea plants, and how to grow them. She appoints Oni as the leader of the new seaweed farmers. As taught by their friends, they string lines to their boats and attach seedlings of all kinds. In a few weeks, their plants grow so long that Moana moves them near the back of the fleet to keep from fouling the rudders. Sina appoints more people to sail with them, harvesting seaweed to dry, or bringing fresh seaweed to those too sick or old to harvest their own. They use dried seaweed for fires or snacks.

While the work is constant, and the seaweed and fish are plainer fare than they had on Motunui or the rare friendly island, the people are fed. Soon, their thin, stretched bodies and faces round out once more. There are no more untimely deaths. The new fuel for their fires allows them to make more water and salt. Moana stands on the farming boat with a proud smile, watching the seaweed trail behind them.

"Isn't it wonderful, Oni?" she asks. "Seaweed grows so fast with so little. We can feed everyone for weeks between landings!"

"Yes, a strange and beautiful crop," Oni tells her. "I miss bananas, though. I miss digging a fresh plot and watching them turn yellow." With a wistful sigh, he turns to the sun. "Oh, there must be coconuts ripening somewhere in the world! I am teaching my son to climb masts, but it's not the same."

She puts a hand on his shoulder. "One day, we'll find an island to call home. You'll have trees again, Oni--I promise."

\- - -

The tattoo artists have fared better than the farmers, or Oni at least. They designed sturdy boats with three or even four hulls which barely rock even in high winds. After the first few boats were finished and they got their sea legs, they resumed work. Moana does not visit them. She says she doesn't know which animal she wants on her back. But Sina sees her looking at the sky uneasily, and wonders what happened.

What animal could Moana fear?

\- - -

One of the warrior's boats on the edge of the fleet shouts out, and they halt expecting pirates or land. Yet there are no islands in sight, nor unfamiliar ships, and the people are perplexed until a cry goes out across the water: "Coconuts!"

"Coconuts?" Moana asks.

"There are coconuts floating in the water, Moana! Fresh coconuts!"

"A gift from the sea!"

The boat sends up a signal, and Moana sails towards the boat who had spotted it. Sure enough, they spy coconuts both green and brown, bobbing along the waves. She orders the fishermen to drop their nets and collect them, then send them to the motherboat to distribute evenly among the people, boat to boat. There are not as many coconuts as there were in Motonui's harvests, but there is enough for everyone to have fresh coconut for a few days, and the rest can be saved for the next few weeks.

"Moana, Moana! Can we make ganegane?"

"Oh, what about hokuo?"

Moana hesitates, and looks at Tui and Sina. Tui grins and shrugs. "You're the chief. Should we use our precious rations to make dessert?"

"We must prepare most of the coconuts for later," Moana says, reluctantly. Everyone groans. "But you prepare them yourselves--I can't watch every boat at once."

Sina's cousin Babay sails up to them from the second circle of ships, reserved for extended family of the chief. In her arms is a big pot of bananas stewed in coconut milk and yam paste. "Oh, Moana!" Babay calls. "I had a few coconuts to spare so I cooked up some hanuiloke!" She winks.

Moana had made none of her people's sweets with the fresh coconuts, diligently preparing each of the coconuts for normal rations. But she laughs and takes a bowl of the dessert, saying that she will sail back to this place at the same time next year.

The people murmur, restless.

Moana corrects herself quickly, "Unless we find another island, of course."

But the idea is there. They have spent a year and a half at sea now with no suitable island. But Sina steps up, reminding everyone that they now have a constant supply of good food and water, and they also have Moana to guide them. Even if they do not find an island, they are safe and provided for. This settles the people, and the good cheer returns.

\- - -

Not long after that, Moana's cousin Lahono goes into labor. Sina and Moana leave the motherboat in an auntie's charge, and swim out to Lahono's family boat. The labor is long and hard, over a day. The girl comes out already wailing, but just when she's been cleaned and swaddled and they think it's all over, Lahono clenches her mother's hand and her husband's arm. Half a day later, another child comes out, and Moana catches her. She is quiet, but when Moana wipes her face clean, she stirs and gives a thin wail.

"Twins!" Tulo cries. Sticking his head out the window, he shouts: "Everyone! I have twins!"

There have been no twins born for decades, and some of them do not survive. The most recent pair of brothers have grown children at least ten years older than Moana, all of them single children. But these two girls are healthy and loud, if small.

"Twins are born!" the shout rings across the water. "Twins to the chief's family!"

"It's a sign!" someone yells. "We have left our dying island on Moana's orders, and even now we have coconuts, and twins have been born! Chief Moana is blessed!"

"Chief Moana is favored by the gods!"

At that, Moana trembles. But she pokes her head out of the door to tell everyone to stop yelling and please let Lahono rest after two days of labor. They quiet, but the air is festive as everyone involved with the birth scrubs two days' worth of blood and placenta off their hands. After depositing the second baby girl in her mother's arms, Moana slips away. Someone tells Sina that they saw her swimming from boat to boat, talking to people.

Sina prepares dinner as she waits for her daughter. A few hours later, Moana shows up at the motherboat, looking lost and uncomfortable and on the verge of tears as she lets her hair down from its bun to rinse the salt water off. In the midst of their village's laughter and well-wishes for the new parents, she is a stone in a fast-running river.

"What do I do, Mom?" Moana pleads. "They keep saying I'm blessed, but I don't feel like it. Yeah, we were lucky to find those coconuts, but I didn't do anything. They just happened along. It wasn't even me who found them. And those aren't my babies! They're Lahono's. I don't even know if I want to have babies after all... that. Favored by the gods..."

It unnerves Sina, how bitter her child sounds. "The people need something to believe in," she tells her. "You believed Malaki and Beriai were lucky, didn't you?"

"Yes, but..." Moana sits down, beckoning for Pua to climb into her lap. The sow snuffles and noses her chin, and Moana starts crying in earnest. "It's just I worked so hard for everything else! We all work so hard now, more than we ever did on Motunui. The boats, the water, the seaweed. And they decide the coconuts and twins are the reason why we're blessed? Out of everything that happened, everything we did?"

"Oh, Moana," Sina says, stroking her daughter's wet hair. "They have not forgotten about all your hard work. But belief has to do with spirit. Hard work will feed the people's stomachs, but you must also take care to feed the people's souls."

"How do I do that?"

"It's something you learn on your own," Sina says. "I can tell you, though, that it's why..." She thinks. "It's why everyone wanted dessert when we found the coconuts. And it's why Oni wanted to grow bananas and coconuts, even though we all knew he couldn't. Do you understand?"

Moana's tears stop, though she still looks confused. "A little bit," she says, and hugs Pua tighter. "Have I been feeding my soul?"

"You've had other things on your mind," Sina says. "But once you figure it out, you'll be just fine."

Moana still has not told her what happened the first time she sailed out. Sina expects she will never hear it, at least while Moana is awake.

For Tui never told anyone what happened with his best friend, either. He came onshore in the morning, carrying the boy's body home to his family. He gave no explanation besides "It was my fault. I am too ashamed to even beg your forgiveness." Tui was prideful and could fly into rages, but he would never kill his friends or family, so everyone assumed a terrible accident had occurred. Perhaps his mother heard the story. She had a way of discovering the truth--or prying it out--but Tala is gone now.

He has not told Sina directly, but she hears what happened on stormy nights, when her husband is asleep and nightmares loosen his tongue. The first time when she asked what he dreamed about, he paled and said, "I can't remember." So she never said anything about it.

After a long silence, Moana asks, "What are the twin's names?"

"Pele-honua-mea, for the elder twin," Sina tells her. "And the younger is Kahina-li'i."

They were named after the goddesses of an old tale. Tulo had been enamored with his daughters immediately and insisted that they recognize the gods. Moana again looks unsettled, but upon giving the children the chief's blessing, she smiles as she watches them grow. In calm waters they allow the children to play in tidepools. Pele-honua-mea is a temperamental child, swimming easily at first but crying when the ocean water stings her eyes. Kahina-li'i swims like a fish, sneaking up on people with hardly a splash.

Their names are too long for young girls, particularly when one of them (Pele-honua-mea) keeps running off much as Moana did when she was younger. After a while, even the loyal water-bearers call the twins by nicknames. They're either 'the twins', which they hate, or Pele and Hina, which they decided on themselves. Moana calls Hina 'little minnow' at times, but Pele refuses another name even from the chief.


	3. The Food of Souls

Now that there is plenty of food and water to go around, Moana finds herself settling smaller complaints.

People come to her with noisy neighbors, and she finds herself faced with the question of who she must order to move their boat--because of course neither of them want to. She tells the people that anyone who makes excessive noise will be moved to the back of the fleet with the farmers.

Growing families need more space and they desire to be closer to the children's boat--or farther so their children will stop sneaking off to play. She spends three whole weeks rearranging the third circle of the fleet until everyone is satisfied.

Tui tells her that it is time to start training new warriors, but they have gone a month without landing on a shore with suitable trees. For once, that is an easy choice: The shadow of the motherboat's mast falls across them, and Moana smiles. She calls all of the warriors' boats to the motherboat one day, and one by one she tests the young men and women by having them climb the great mast.

When children attempt to imitate them, Moana is hesitant about stepping in--parental discipline is generally an individual concern, and not that of the chief's. Then Pele falls and breaks her arm, and another boy slips and tears a sail in two as he falls down, and she decides enough is enough. She will issue another verdict that any children who climb masts without permission must fix the property they have damaged, or assist the water-bearers for as long as any wounds are healed.

Before calling a counsel, Moana uses this opportunity to ask permission of the water-bearers, and to inspect their boat properly. She has looked in to ask about injuries or broken goods after storms, or to ask if there are concerns with the supply. But she has never taken a good look at the inside of the boat.

They have taken the roof off. Sunlight falls onto a collection of what she thinks are statues. Carved of wood or sculpted from clay into amazingly intricate shapes, she sees dolphins leaping, octopi grabbing clams, men with digging sticks, women with baskets, coconut trees. There are many red birds like 'apanepane, with their elongated beaks touching the center of an egg. Then she looks closer to find that the statues are all sitting over shallow firepits built into the floor, and laughs.

They are pots, variations of the simple system she had devised so long ago--two pots with a reed connecting them.

"How beautiful!" Charmed by the decoration, Moana crouches to observe the octopus, a red one perched on a black rock with yellow and white shells decorating it. One tentacle extends to a clam. "May I see one, Lupa?"

"Of course, Chief."

She picks up the larger of the two pots carefully, and removes the lid. The reed is now a spout shaped in the same piece as the head, hooked to fit within a small hole in the lid of the smaller pot. Inside the large pot is a paste of salt, simmering gently. The smaller pot is full of clear water.

"There are so many birds. How did that happen?"

"We have a lot of time on our hands waiting for water to boil and salt to dry," Lupa says. "At least when the water is calm. So we use it to paint or sculpt other pots."

Some of the elders who had also volunteered are there, and show her the unfinished pairs of pots. "The big pot looked so much like a fat bird with a long beak," an uncle tells her, "We couldn't resist painting them that way, and then other people had other ideas. They've gotten so detailed now that they practically tell stories."

In a corner, Moana sees an unpainted clay pot. Yet it's unmistakable as the figure of a strongman with a fishhook, pulling up an island. She looks away quickly and smiles at everyone. "Thank you for letting me in," she tells them. "I've come to tell you that there is a huge problem with children climbing masts, and I'm thinking of sending them here as punishment."

"You mean stoking fires or refilling jugs?" Lupa asks drily.

"Of course," Moana scoffs. "They're being punished, so no fun stuff."

"Send them!" someone shouts at once. "We can't wait to get rid of those chores!"

The whole boat roars with laughter, and she takes her leave for the motherboat, banging the drum. Soon after, the first squad of mischief-makers including Pele and the young boy Akamu are sent to the water-bearers. She takes it as a success when the children complain every day. Pele stomps over to Moana as soon as her punishment is over, fuming. "I hate you, Auntie!"

She is six. Moana doesn't take it personally.

"You're the one who broke your arm falling off a mast you weren't supposed to climb," she replies with evenness, holding her chin high. "I cannot give my family special favor."

One day Moana goes in to look at the jugs, and finds her cousin's daughter. At first she thinks Pele has been climbing masts again, but the girl gently swaddles a bird-shaped jar in a blanket and gives it to an elder, who thanks her and pats her on the hand. It is obviously Hina, who waves to Moana and runs over. "Hi Auntie!"

"Hina!" Surprised, Moana smiles and performs hongi. "What are you doing here? You're the good one."

"She likes it here," Balisaya says. "Strange girl--but we're not complaining."

"I like to put blankets around the pretty birds," Hina announces. "To keep them warm at night!"

Moana smiles and sends her back to her mother, then comes back to the water-bearers. "Does she know the blankets will burn if the pots are actually used?"

"Oh, we just send them back in the morning with the day's water," Balisaya tells her. "We can't break her little heart like that."

Her mother's words echo in her mind, about the food of souls.

"Well, I guess it's not doing any harm. But please, don't feel obligated to put up with it just because she's my cousin's daughter."

"We don't," is the flippant response. "We put up with it because Hina is a sweet little girl, unlike Pele."

\- - -

When someone at the next village counsel brings up the lack of flowers for their hair, a clamor starts up, almost as loud as the first time they had begged to make desserts with their coconuts. Moana suggests seaweed, but they refuse its dull colors at once. She suggest drying flowers between landings, but it doesn't catch on. Her parents refuse their counsel again.

"This isn't a lesson, by the way," Tui says with a wry smile. "We're just as stumped as you."

She asks for three days to find a solution and goes swimming for suitable plants.

There is a seaweed forest with fish swimming slowly in their half-sleep. She avoids rocks and urchins, and once an eel. But nothing strikes her as suitable until she sees something glint on the bottom of the sea, glinting green. Her heart stops, but she goes to it anyway, wondering if she has come back to the heart of Te Fiti.

It is half of an oyster shell.

Bringing it up to the surface, she looks to the silent ocean, then rummages in the tool box. She carves the shell into the shape of a hibiscus flower with a pin, and puts it behind her left ear. This is what stays in her hair longer than any flower. Sina commends her on her ingenuity and makes one for herself out of a sand dollar.

After the first few weeks of experimenting, the people settle into trends.

Hina asks for a hairpin of white abalone shell shaped like a gull, so that people will stop calling her Pele--and most importantly, to stop yelling at her for something Pele did. Not to be outdone, Pele collects a shard of obsidian when they land on a low island covered with the smooth glassy rock, and says she will wear the black stone in her hair so people will stop asking her to do errands. All of the elders insist that the obsidian is bad luck as it comes from a blighted island. That only encourages Pele.

Moana does not believe it--and she suspects Hina doesn't, either, as the girl defends her twin. But she compromises, saying that she will let the stone trail behind the motherboat on a line, and if it is still there at the end of three days, then the ocean has cleansed it of bad luck.

"But, Pele-honua-mea," she says upon giving her cousin's daughter the stone, "Don't blame me when something bad happens later. You don't need a stone to attract bad luck."

Pele laughs and laughs and laughs, while her parents shake their heads.

Men wear flowers carved from drift wood or rock, and the warriors settle on bone, with the number of petals symbolizing how many they have killed in battle. It becomes fashionable for young women to boil urchin shells in vinegar to remove the spines, and decorate the globe-shaped remains with pearls or black ink.

Soon, the oyster divers have a smaller group of swimmers who collect shells and bones and other such things for making jewelry.

Soon, people bring the divers food or mend sails in exchange for unworked shells. The stonecarvers turn their talents to carving the tough ocean materials.

Moana finds herself debating whether a basket of seaweed would be a fair trade for twenty pearls which took weeks to harvest, and decides it is not, because seaweed is too easy to grow. There is grumbling, but only on the seaweed farmer's part, and he does not make the same trade again. Several weeks later, the diver is happy to accept an offer of shark teeth and skin in exchange from those same pearls, from a warrior who wants to wed her lover, and Moana officiates her first marriage on the motherboat. The glowing couple is escorted to a new boat as a celebration occurs.

After the wedding, Sina takes both of Moana's hands and presses their foreheads together, saying, "You feed the people well, Moana."

\- - -

In the five years that pass, they find many islands.

One is too small for the growing village.

One is not blighted, and yet not fertile enough to live on. There is grass and a fresh water lake on a large plain, but no trees, coconut or otherwise. They find signs of a village with unburied bones in the houses, and quickly retreat. Moana inspects the lake, putting her hand into it as if she was testing the current, then tells them the water is fine. There are whispers of Tala, with her strange knowledge, but Moana laughs and points to some fish swimming at the bottom among lake plants.

"It can't be too bad if there are fish and plants," she insists. She cups some water in her hands and drinks, and the people flinch, but nothing terrible happens to her. Still, they do not drink of the water themselves, and Moana doesn't force them to. They have their own water, after all.

One island already has a good-sized village. They are sympathetic and friendly, replenishing Motunui's stores with land vegetables and meats and spices, in exchange for deep sea fish and medicinal seaweed. The chief listens to Tui and Sina's warnings to conserve against the blight which had consumed Motunui. But upon sailing off with the night's low tide, Moana looks back for a long time.

Sina wonders what her daughter sees in the moonlight and is again reminded of the former chieftess.

Once, Tui sees an island in the distance with many trees and ripe brown coconuts floating in the water around it--but Moana frowns and signals for the fleet to stop. When the various creaks of sails and wood quiets down, they hear more sails and more ropes, coming from the island itself. Moana shakes her head and signals for the fleet to turn downwind. She orders everyone not to gather the coconuts, for they are the Kakamora pirates acting as bait.

When the island begins to follow them against the current, with a low, constant rattle of war drums, there are no more arguments.

More marriages happen, and more children are born; some on land, but most of them on sea. There are more twins, and sometimes even triplets. Moana tells the people one day that they are free to settle anywhere they land, if the life they lead now is too difficult. But the newlyweds build boats instead of houses. The elders refuse to leave the people they have known all their lives. So they are provided for by everyone in the village until their lives have ended, with as much peace as Moana can grant them.

\- - -

Their warrior ships become slimmer, and the sails grow in size for speed during pirate attacks, when they may need to weave through the fleet from the opposite side. They put torches on their masts for signal fires. Weapons also hang from the masts rather than taking up space on the canoe. The very strongest warriors are the ones who climb to the top, and they use a vicious long pike to tear the sails of anyone trying to follow them. The warriors develop acrobatic sailing methods of weighting one side of the canoe in order to sail through narrow openings.

They drill maneuvers in open water when the fleet is resting, and even Moana is amazed at how the light boats fly like birds through the water.

Pele is amazed as well, and her parents find her sneaking away so often that they beg Moana to do something about it.

"Pele-honua-mea, you may not steal a canoe or sneak onto a warrior ship again!" she lectures the girl. "It looks fun, but it's dangerous. They've been training for longer than you've been alive. If I hear of you doing this again, I will--"

"Yes, Auntie! I promise I won't do it again!" Pele nods hastily, and Tui snorts. Moana has a flashback to her childhood years, and rolls her eyes at her father. Then, she sighs and crouches.

"Listen," she says, and Pele looks up. "If you want to be a warrior, I will let you start training with them."

Surprised at the change, Pele shrieks with glee and throws her arms around Moana. "Thank you Auntie!"

"But you must listen to your parents and to me!" she says, pulling out of the hug quickly. "Warriors are very disciplined, Pele! They must do exactly as their leaders say, for one mistake could mean death."

And so Pele begins training with the warriors. Amazingly, her behavior improves, and she becomes skilled with the little blunt training pike. But she is simply not patient enough for the rest of warfare, nor does she have the discipline. There are many complaints. Pele falls out of canoes trying a maneuver too advanced for her. Pele pushes other children out of the canoe. Pele hides her teammates' weapons when she is angry. Pele is late. Pele never listens.

Eventually Pele stops on her own as everyone was expecting, fed up with the constant orders and strict schedules. The melancholy afterward makes her less inclined to mischief, but after a while, Moana doesn't like it. She tells Pele to try all of the other trades and see what she likes best.

Hina goes with her sister, at least to the gentler trades of their seafaring life. She harvests and cleans seaweed, refills jugs for the water-bearers, mends sails. Moana notes that she has permission from her parents to climb the mast. Moreover, she goes higher than most other children when pulling up the rigging. But also, Moana sees that where Pele--tempestuous as she is--has a friend on every boat, Hina is too shy. She never goes to the children's boat unless Pele is there, and when she's learning about trades she only speaks to the adults about errands.

"Hina?" Moana asks during dinner, when Pele is sleeping at a friend's boat. "I've noticed you spend a lot of time alone without Pele. Doesn't it bother you?"

"No," Hina answers at once. "I'm okay, Auntie. Thank you."

Lahono takes her aside. "Thank you, Moana. We've noticed she does seem sadder than usual... but whenever we outright say it, she just tries to hide it more. We don't know why, but she never asks for help, either. The only errands she won't do are the ones that need two people, unless family is around."

"That's too bad." Moana sighs. "I could try to help with this, but I'm not sure what to do either."

\- - -

Hina is helping a farmer's wife today at the back of the fleet, pulling the long leaves out of the water and tying them together. Moana goes through an inspection of the farms while she watches Hina. The ends often ensnare fish, which are usually kept for the night's dinner. But Hina carefully untangles a fish splashing in the water, and lets it loose. Moana remembers Hina putting blankets around the bird jars.

"Hina!" she calls. "When you're done with that, I have a question."

The farmer's wife lets Hina go at once, and she swims over to Oni's canoe, where Moana stands on the ama.

"I have some important chief's business for a few days, and we need more room. I know Pele is with the fishers, but would you and your parents take care of Pua for me?" Moana asks.

Hina smiles and nods. "Yes Auntie!"

"No banana chips unless she's been good," she says.

"Yes, Auntie!"

Pua comes back to the motherboat snuffling happily and quite a bit fatter than usual.

"But she was very good," Hina explains, scratching the sow between the ears. "Weren't you, Pua?"

\- - -

Hina is the one who takes away the leftovers from meals. This always brings seabirds or fish. Usually people catch the fish and chase the gulls off, but Hina drops the fishbones and heads and scraps of seaweed out of her basket one at a time, laughing as she watches the gulls scramble over each other. When a fight occurs, she tosses them more to stop it.

That settles it. Hina is more comfortable with animals than people. Moana speaks to Lahono about getting Hina a pet to ease the loneliness she feels without her sister, and perhaps bring the girl out of her shell.

But the past few islands have been blighted so badly that Moana cannot find the friendly village they encountered several years ago, let alone any animals suitable for a young girl's pet. Without plants, there are no fish. Without fish, there are no dolphins or gulls. She hopes the people are all right, that they have simply taken to sea. But her heart sinks as she finds the trees have all rotted and crumbled away, and the grass is parched brown. There are a few boats left, but they are still tied to their piers.

The sea murmurs to Moana for the first time in a long time. It splashes against a cliff which looks familiar. There is no proper shore, but at the ocean's behest, Moana takes the helm of a warrior boat and sails very close to the sheer cliff, climbing the mast. She hears a peeping sound and finds a gull's nest with one abandoned chick, fluffy with gray down. She wraps it in her skirt and when back to the fleet, she goes to her cousin's boat.

"Hina?" she calls, holding the bird behind her back.

"Yes Auntie?"

"I have a gift for you."

"It's not my birthday."

"This gift can't wait until your birthday," Moana says, smiling as she brings out the chick.

"Oh!"

"This bird was left behind by its parents. It's lonely and hungry. Would you take care of it for me?"

Hina smiles, but sobers quickly. "I don't know how to take care of birds. Not little ones like this."

"You're very smart, Hina. You'll find a way. And if you can't, you can always ask someone."

Hina takes the bird cautiously. "What if it flies away? Like its parents did."

"It might fly away," Moana admits.

"But I don't want it to," Hina says.

"Everything goes away sometime," she says, thinking of her grandmother, and Maui. "I'll be here for you if this bird does leave. And maybe it won't. Maybe it will stay with you. Or maybe it will fly away and come back."

Hina laughs, a little louder than usual, and presses her forehead to the bird's. The peeping softens. "I don't want you to fly away forever. So I'll feed you and name you and make sure you're happy. As long as you come back."

"What are you naming it?"

"Ma'ue!" Moana frowns, and Hina retreats into her shell. "Do you not like it, Auntie?"

"It's fine! It's fine!" Moana assures her. "I thought you said something else." But she is relieved when Hina insists that the bird is a girl, even though there's no way to tell unless the bird lays an egg. That will be three or four years from now.

\- - -

When Moana needs to repair her chief's attire, she cannot find birds with beautiful red feathers like the 'apanepane, not outside of Motunui. So she collects the black and white feathers of seagulls. Hina's devotion to her pet bird inspires her to be kind, so she harvests fallen plumage from cliffs. If there are not enough, she catches a gull (never Ma'ue, for more reasons than one), plucks a few, and then allows them to fly off.

Her cape and headdress slowly turn white, not only due to the feathers, but because the salt spray dries white on her clothes, sparkling like mica. In the end, she gives up shaking the salt off to clean it before ceremonies, and no one much minds the trail of white left in her wake.

Like the red in her cape, the memories of Motunui fade, and this concerns her more. Her cousin's daughters, the first children born at sea, already speak of Motunui as if it was an old legend like the goddesses they were named after.

"Is it bad?" Moana asks her parents. "Is it bad that the children don't think Motunui is real? We keep telling them that they come from there, that it's their home, but they've never seen it."

"They do think it's real," Sina tells her. "In the same way they think the gods are real, or their dreams. It's simply in a different way from something they see all the time, like food or ships."

She wonders how the son of Oni is doing. He has never grown coconut trees, but he hears of them every time they find coconuts in the water, or land on an island with trees. She thinks of Maui, very briefly, and wonders why in all seven years of sailing she hasn't seen him again. She doesn't want to, but she should have. She finds the same islands, if not the same villages.

"Moana," Tui says. "For generations, this ship was hidden away in a cave far from the ocean, and for the past seven years we've lived on it. Things change."

"Do you think we'll ever find an island of our own?" she asks.

Something inside of her parents crumples. "No," Tui says. "Not one like Motunui."

"But we are still home," Sina assures her. "With our family, we are home. That's what matters, my little minnow." She holds Moana's hands and says gently, "You take great care with your people, Moana. Remember your own soul."

She looks out of the window to the rest of the fleet. She still doesn't know how to feed her soul, or if she's doing it at all. She is twenty-three, and suddenly feels like a child again.

Only adults can remember Motonui as it was--a place of plenty. Even the older children only remember the island going sour and failing. To them, the fleet of boats is home, where they grew up on thick seaweed soup and octopus. Bananas and chicken are now delicacies along with coconuts, which do appear in the same place every year (aside from the Kakamora). The pets on board have changed to manta rays and abandoned dolphin pups and all the birds who live on the ocean. There are no pigs like Pua, who is old now.

And when old Pua dies, Hina and Pele cry bitter tears. They had slept cuddled beside the sow many nights, or fed her precious banana chips when Moana was not looking. They participate in the sea burial with the solemness of six year old girls, and dote on Ma'ue for a week.

Moana does not weep. She no longer jumps when Hina calls her bird. But she does not take another pet, either.

Frustrated and filled with tears that will not fall, she fusses with the motherboat before leaving it in her father's charge for the night. Her parents gaze after her knowingly, and don't press the matter.

For the first time in years, she climbs down to the waterline with a bowl of seaweed soup in one hand, boards her old canoe and eats her meal on it. She keeps it clean and repaired, but she's never stayed on it too long or unfurled the sail at all. Not since coming home from her disastrous attempt to restore the heart of Te Fiti with Maui. She does not untie it now, only lets her hand trail in the water, hoping fiercely that a manta ray will appear or the ocean will call to her again. But nothing rises from the cold, black water and no call sounds.

Her people are happy, she thinks. They are healthy and safe and the village is easily twice the size it was on Motunui. Her parents are proud. Her cousin's daughters adore her. All of the inhabited islands know her by name and call her the chief of the ocean. She is out on the water she had longed to be on for all her life. But looking out to the horizon now brings her a flat resignnation. Thinking of the future brings her no disappointment, for she knows they will survive whatever storms come their way. But it brings no joy either. Not to her.

She has crossed the horizon several times, she thinks bitterly, throwing the rest of her cold soup into the sea. By touch, by smell, by the wind and the birds and fish and stars, she knows all of the waters in the world.

 _But not the waters where Maui left you,_ a voice whispers. A voice she hasn't heard for years. The sail is furled above her, but all of a sudden she feels the black spiral fluttering overhead, like a heartbeat or a drum.

_Not the waters that lead to Te Fiti._


	4. Maui Returns

The twins have gone through all the trades in the fleet, and while they are good at a few of them, they do not know where they will settle, and Moana does not press them. They are seven, and then eight, and then nine, and they are still too young. One day, when there is very little wind and the fleet drifts along in calm waters, they swim to the motherboat, Hina's pet bird perched on her shoulder.

"Pele, Hina!" She performs hongi with each twin, and ruffles Ma'ue's feathers. It helps that the bird is small and white, not a giant golden hawk. "What can I do for you today?"

"Mommy keeps throwing up," Pele announces. "It's been a week and Daddy is too busy taking care of her. They're both really happy but they don't have any time for us."

"I'm sorry, girls. You know your mother isn't sick, though. Your family is growing bigger--"

"We know!" Pele says. "But she was supposed to teach us to sail! We're nine whole years and we still don't know! All our friends started learning ages ago and they're not even the chief's family like us. We can't use the boat until Mom has the baby and that'll take _forever._ So you have to teach us on yours!"

Moana looks towards the giant mast of the motherboat and bursts into laughter. "You'll need to be a little taller before you can sail my boat."

"No Auntie," Hina says, pointing to the smaller canoe trailing behind them. "That one."

Moana frowns. She wants to say no, that she will find another boat. Where Hina shrinks from disapproval, Pele bristles and holds her head high and Moana refuses to see any resemblance between herself and her cousin's daughter. "We've never seen you sail that boat, Auntie. What use is a sailboat if it's never sailed?"

"It's only a very little one," Hina mumbles.

Taking a deep breath, Moana explains, "I wasn't saying no. I was just thinking of how long it's been since I've sailed it. It might need repairs."

When day breaks, she almost calls the twins, but then the ocean splashes her arm urgently. She squints into the distance to see an island, a little smaller than Motunui. When they arrive, they are pleasantly surprised to find breadfruit and jackfruit trees, slim but already old enough for fruits to appear.

Babay grabs her attention for a moment, and in an excited undertone she asks, "Moana, will we stay here? It's small, but we should all fit. Especially if some of us are out voyaging. And look at all the trees!"

She had not planned for longer than a few weeks, as long as it takes to repair her boat. Something besides that makes her hesitate. Moana looks out to the forest and all the slim, young trees bother her instead of adding excitement. "I need to think about it."

Sina is the one to inform her, always gentle. "The forest is too young--and Motunui is too old. This island can't hold both the trees and our people for long without one of them disappearing entirely. I can tell Babay, if you'd like."

Moana feels a lump grow in her throat, and nods. She is ashamed of herself, and braces for disappointment as she watches her mother speak. To her surprise, Babay nods and accepts it, and goes to gather a huge basket of breadfruit and jackfruit as she would do on any other island. Each and every one of them are revealed to be free of blight, so the whole village comes out to harvest from the wild trees, and most of the children scurry around snatching bits and pieces for themselves, including Pele.

She takes the time to restore her boat. A new sail is woven, and matching rope. While that's being done, she takes a piece of shark-skin to smooth away the scratches and splinters. The worst of the planks, burnt and cut through with long gashes, she simply removes and replaces with seasoned planks of koa wood. Tapping a breadfruit tree yields a good bucket of sap which she uses to seal the new planks.

Even with the extreme care she takes, from scrubbing the storage clean, replacing all the rigging, and matching the engraving details on the hull, it is not hard work or long. She's finished in about two weeks, and her family remarks on how pretty the boat is. Looking up at the sail, she finds it too bright, too empty. The sails on every boat are decorated, even the new ones. She goes to an uncle's boat, whose son is a tattoo artist, and asks for the very darkest ink. With brush in hand, she lays the sail flat on the ground.

The twins' first sailing lesson happens in the shallows of that island, with a new black spiral fluttering over them as she teaches them to pull the sheet.

\- - -

Pele is a good sailor, because she is Moana's blood, and because they all have to be. She is a kind-hearted girl, Moana reminds herself often. Pele is the first to help Hina search for Ma'ue when the bird flies off, even though she grumbles all the way. She never stands for bullying on the children's boat, though the family has to curb her habit of pushing said bully into the water. But the fire in her has only grown with age and lack of an outlet. During lessons on Moana's canoe, she often sails off-course to chase something, so Moana rarely puts her in charge of the rudder.

The first simple task given to children after a few sailing lessons is building their own little canoe, towed behind their family boats. On it, they deliver empty jugs from their homes to the water-bearers, and back again when they have been filled with water and salt. Pele is bold enough to sail in a brisk wind, but she falls out of the canoe when a too-loose knot slips, and spills water straight into the salt. So she has to go back and wait for the water to be boiled out, and everyone hides their smiles when they see Pele gnashing her teeth.

Hina has all the patience her sister does not, and more. It takes her longer to learn sailing, but she does not mind sitting out the water delivery. When Hina comes to the motherboat and asks if Moana needs water, Moana wonders if the family has become cautious after Pele, especially since Lahono is further along in her pregnancy. She does not blame them, but she looks outside to see a canoe filled with pots that she recognizes from all the second circle's boats.

"Be careful," Moana says, handing her the Waialiki jars. A manta ray rests on top with its wide wings curled down, and a flower bud serves as the water jug. "Your canoe is too small to hold all those jugs when they're full."

"Yes, Auntie. I'll take them one at a time."

Moana smiles and stays outside, watching her cousin's daughter. The slight wind and heavier load means Hina is slow, but she takes care that no water or salt spills, and she matches each pair of pots to the proper family--Lahono's flute player with a pig, the urchin and seagull from her uncle Nako's boat, and a woman with a cookpot for Babay. After receiving their jars back, Moana caresses Hina's cheek just underneath the gull pin, thinking idly: _Hina would be a good chief._

Quickly, she corrects herself: _Unless I have a child of my own._ But she looks out at the ocean and her people, and the idea is there. She has already made so many changes, changes which have work, changes which have been accepted by the people. There have been nieces or nephews or half-siblings often enough that this may not even count.

Something loosens inside her, and she wonders if she has finally started feeding her soul.

\- - -

Tulo's boat with green and blue sails speeds to the motherboat's side, and he shouts for permission to board the motherboat with Lahono. The whole family comes out to help her on deck, lowering a lifeboat and carefully hauling the two up. Once Sina's finished tying the knots back in, she rushes inside to prepare a light snack and plenty of cushions while Tulo and Tui help her in.

"So Lahono, what brings you here?" Moana asks.

"I need your help."

"What's Pele done this time?" Tui asks, only half-joking.

"Nothing yet," Tulo says with a bright grin. "And that's all I'll say for now because if I go any further, Lahono will kill me."

"Well, if it's a matter of life and death," Moana says, smiling. "What can I do for you, cousin?"

"My daughters are old enough to learn to cook," Lahono announces. "It's, um... It's too late in my pregnancy for me to do... certain things. Would you assist me?"

Moana lets out a peal of undignified laughter. "You can't reach the firepit with your stomach that way!"

"How was I supposed to know this would happen?" Lahono demands, smacking her belly. "I didn't show this much with the twins!"

"Obviously, it means you have four," Moana tells her. She ducks away from her cousin's swat.

"Don't even say it. We should never have named them after gods, Tulo. At the very least, not Pele. It's like naming a boy Maui."

"Fine!" Moana says, a little too loud. "Fine! I'll teach them!" At her mother's look, she goes on, "I won't even tell them why I'm the one making the fire, okay? I'll say--" She snorts, genuinely regaining her humor. "I'll say, since they're twins, they need two teachers--"

"Moana," Sina sighs, as Tui chortles.

Lahono glowers, and the resemblance between her and Pele is startling.

As always, it turns into a huge family affair. Lahono calls the twins over and gives them each a set of firestones. Babay, who she got the stones from, comes to watch because she is the best cook in the village, and her husband comes to keep her suggestions in check. Sina is too excited to wait for the finished food, so she sits down immediately to watch the two. Tui pokes his head in and jokes about trusting Pele with fire or knives, then goes to bring a basket of fresh fish from his brother and some leaves to wrap them in, which brings Nako and his wife Aialu.

That's when the motherboat gets very crowded, so Moana bars anyone else from entering in order to have enough room to cook. She slowly walks the twins through striking the stones, making a fire, wrapping a fish, and burying it in coals--the simplest meal besides seaweed soup. Hina, dutiful as always, volunteers first.

The first time, Hina doesn't get a spark, but she tightens her mouth and tries again.

And again.

And again.

After a few more tries than usual, Lahono speaks up. "Strike them harder, my sweet bird. Like this--ah!" She takes the firestones but fails to get her hands together around her pregnant belly, and waves at Moana. "Moana! Do it for me." She seems to have forgotten her embarrassment. Moana strikes for a shower of sparks, and Hina tries it, but hits her own fingers.

As Lahono inspects the scratched hand, Tui remarks, "Pele's gone." Tulo immediately heads out to find his firstborn.

Sina chimes in, "I see now, it's the angle." She fiddles with Hina's hands. "There, hold them like this." Hina strikes her stones and there is still no spark.

"Maybe you're not using a big enough rock," Moana wonders out loud. "Here, Hina, use mine." She gives Hina her set of stones, and Hina tries again.

To everyone's dismay but no one's surprise, nothing happens and Hina bursts into tears. That is when Tulo comes in with his daughter over his shoulder. Pele squirms out of his grasp, ready to scramble off, but then she sees her twin crying and comes over at once. "What's wrong, Hina?"

"I c-can't make a fire," Hina sobs, as her mother and all the assembled family try to soothe her.

Pele looks at the firepit, then picks up Hina's discarded stones. "It's okay," she says. "Look, it's easy."

She strikes them over the firepit with a shower of sparks, then leans over and puffs at the smoking ribbons of seaweed and wood. In a few moments, she has a fire crackling cheerfully under her hands. Without a word or a missed step, Pele scales and guts her fish, wraps it in leaves, and stirs the coals briskly with the fire rake before digging a shallow hole and burying the little parcel. Then she rinses her hands in a bowl of clear water and wipes them off, looking up to see everyone staring.

"What?" Pele asks. "I learned how to make a fire when I was training with the warriors. Akamu said his dad said he can start a fire on the ocean in a storm."

They highly doubt the latter, seeing as the claim comes from two mischievous children, and one warrior who may be exaggerating his exploits to his son. But at the very least, Moana thinks back to Pele's brief training and realizes that while there were a great many complaints, keeping the signal torches lit was not one of them. In fact, Pele kept a sharp eye out for pirates or land, if only because she wanted a fight or a new place to explore.

"How'd you learn to clean and wrap that fish?" Tui asks. "The warriors didn't teach you that. There's no space on their boats to cook."

"I watched Auntie!" Pele says impatiently. "She just did it, and she went way slower than Mom does. Akamu said his dad said his teachers would show him a move only once at full speed before telling him to try it."

Moana knows for a fact that there are plenty of slowed-down demonstrations for weaponry.

It is usual for Pele to stop getting into mischief once she starts learning a trade, but the void is filled with Hina's tragic attempts at cooking. Moana envies Lahono, who can claim pregnancy fouls her appetite to keep from hurting Hina's feelings. What Lahono doesn't eat, Hina brings to Moana. She swallows undercooked food with all the patience she can muster, until one day Hina brings her a basket of shark meat which smells so terrible it has to be thrown into the ocean. After that, Moana is rewarded with overcooked food.

One day, when the sea is calm, Hina pokes her head through Moana's door, holding her seagull in her arms the way Moana used to do with Pua when she was sad.

"Auntie?" she asks. "Can I talk to you outside?"

"What's wrong?"

She sniffs and sits on the ama, cuddling Ma'ue, and Moana sits next to her, waiting. After a long time, she plucks up all her courage and whispers, "I don't like cooking the way Pele does."

"Oh, Hina!" Moana says at once. She would swallow a million burnt fish if it would keep Hina from crying. "That's fine. You don't have to be as good as Pele."

"No, I like Pele's cooking. She does it every day now that Mom can't see the firepit. I just don't like cooking myself. It's too hot and it's different every day and everyone keeps telling me new ways to fix the same dish. You're the chief, but Auntie Babay is the best cook, but Auntie Sina is the oldest, but Pele is my age--and I don't know who to listen to!"

With the honesty that comes so easily to a child, Moana realizes that is why Hina struggles so much. When Hina learned other trades, she only had one teacher because no one else in the family knew the specialized methods developed. Now everyone including Moana pitches in with ten different solutions for every problem, which overwhelms someone comforted by routine. Pele tries to help her sister with the variety of different methods she learns, which is even worse as Pele has long since developed her skills past her twin's. And while Hina's food is terrible, it is at least consistently terrible--because she tries one suggestion at a time.

"Why don't you just try learning one recipe, and get that right before you start another?" Moana says. "Like seaweed soup. Ask your mother. No one will argue with seaweed soup the way your mother cooks it."

"I'll try. Maybe tomorrow."

Hina burns the soup, which is not how Lahono cooks it.

In the week that follows, Lahono keeps sending her daughter over, and Moana has to find very creative ways to dump the more inedible experiments without being seen. But one day, Moana is not greeted with a despondent little girl. The next day is when Hina shows up at Moana's boat in the morning with two bowls of seaweed and fish. "Mom kept saying she didn't like all the spices I tried because the baby was messing up her stomach, so yesterday I only put in a little bit of salt."

It probably wasn't the spices or Lahono's pregnancy, Moana thinks, though she won't admit it until Hina is a little more confident. However, when Hina mentions her mother ate half the pot, Moana can definitely believe it was the baby. The soup is too plain for Pele to have given her any help, not to mention Hina is too honorable to pass off her sister's work as her own. But it is filling and Moana smiles as she takes the first bite.

"This is good," she tells her. "I'm proud of you, Hina."

"Mom said that too," Hina says. "But it's not even fancy seaweed soup like Pele makes. And I still don't like cooking."

"Well, you tried very hard at it, and you got a lot better," Moana says. "That's what counts."

\- - -

Pele had shown talent during her warrior training, and several other trades, but the main reason she had failed to continue with them was how swiftly she got bored. In cooking, Pele's creativity shines when experimenting, and everyone stops dreading her arrival because most of the time she's simply asking about different ingredients or recipes. Only sometimes does she have mischief in mind. After the new child is born, a single boy--which gives Tulo and Lahono a lot of relief--they invite the family to their boat one day for a dinner of fish and seaweed.

Fish and seaweed is an understatement. Waiting for the family is a whole roasted swordfish, steaming under a sauce of coconut milk, with sliced golden ginger on top of it for flavor and decoration. It looks as if it's been made of gold. Moana's jaw drops, along with everyone else's. The seaweed soup looks deceptively normal, but with shredded coconut and hot peppers, it is a bold counterpart to the mildness of the fish.

"Pele!" Tui exclaims. "How long did you spend on this?"

"A few days, I guess. Most of that was getting everything together. And I had to ask my friends to help me carry the swordfish on board because Mom and Dad were too busy with the baby. And then I had to make a plate for the swordfish because we didn't have any that were big enough..." Pele trails off while everyone besides her own family stares at her in shock. "What?" the girl demands.

"You've never spent a few days on _anything!_ " Sina says.

"How did you think of that sauce?" Moana asks.

Pele shrugs. "I was bored. We had a few coconuts left and Mom said I could use the spices."

Babay pounds her fist on the table. "Child! Come to my boat tomorrow and I will continue your training in the art of the kitchen!"

Their yearly gathering of coconuts has evolved into a week-long festival with all of the most difficult and delicious coconut recipes. There is a contest for hanuiloke on the last day, which is mostly an excuse for the judges to eat lots of dessert without cooking it. Hina wanders around with Ma'ue on her shoulder, picking up roasted fish for her bird, or munching happily on seaweed chips and candied ginger. She no longer seems bothered by her lack of skill in the kitchen and Moana is glad of that.

Pele and Babay cause a stir when they barter for at least half the fleet's bananas and far more cinnamon sticks than is usual for hanuiloke. Then they vanish into Babay's boat, which smokes mysteriously at all hours. They come out with a huge jar of banana chips soaking in coconut milk. Another jar that smells like hanuiloke surprises everyone who looks in, for it is a deep purple with yam instead of the traditional white of the coconut milk. Everyone watches to see how she will mix the two into a soup.

She doesn't. She sticks a cinnamon stick into each banana slice, dips them into the sauce, and leaves the pieces in the sun to harden into a shell over the softened fruit. With a little knife, she shaves the candies from the plate.

After the judges have a bite, they declare Pele the winner and reluctantly share the food, less reluctantly giving Pele the little wreath of leaves. Lahono and Tulo weep when Pele comes to them . "We are so proud of you, Pele!"

"Why?" Pele asks, pleased but baffled. "It's not hard for me like it is for Hina."

"Why? My darling, this is the longest you have ever stayed out of trouble," Tulo says. "Two whole months! And you spent a whole week on that hanuiloke!"

"Because cooking is fun!" Pele says. "And I don't get punished if I do something different with food, unless it's really bad. And Auntie Babay only punishes me by making me eat it all."

"Bad food is its own punishment," Babay says. She claps Pele on the shoulder. "Good work, Pele. Find something you've never cooked before and bring it tomorrow. You don't stop training just because you win one contest."

\- - -

The first storm in blue water had taken many lives and many boats, and her people had again sheared their hair off. The very first thing Moana did after that was to solidify the protocol, for while everyone had weathered a storm or two in a fishing boat, it is different having many boats.

Despite the huge amount of children and growing group of elders, Moana's plan goes off without a hitch.

Tui heads onto the nearest island first, with the uninjured women and men. It is familiar but uninhabited, and for good reason. There is great expanse of sand and some stunted koa trees which learned to live on salt-water, but not much else, not even freshwater. The men harvest wood for weaving baskets or tent walls. Moana leads all of the boats to the lee-side and gets ready to inspect them for repairs. Sina counts the supplies and makes room for all of the koa seeds that women gather. With the village grown so much, Balisaya has been elected as the third medicine woman, and she along with the others bring out bandages and salves for the ill and injured.

"Ma'ue! Ma'ue!" Moana looks up at Hina's cry from the beach, but she's in the middle of assisting with a fisher's broken leg. When she sees Lahono with Mahalo on her hip, helping with the tents, she reluctantly decides that nothing is wrong. Hina's gull sometimes flies off, but not for long.

Several hours later, while she helps pitch tents of sealskin or woven acacia, she hears Pele shouting "Auntie Moana!" Weaving through the crowd of tents, and tugs on Moana's hand. "Auntie, I can't find Hina! She left to find Ma'ue but she hasn't come back and it's been a long time! I checked the shore and there was just a dead bird and it wasn't Ma'ue."

Moana thinks. Unless it's cooking, Pele's idea of a long time is maybe an hour. But the storm made her uneasy, and if even Pele is concerned... "Calm down, Pele. Did you check the--"

"Yes, I asked the fishers and the farmers and even the water bearers! She's not with any of them!"

"Hina!" comes Tulo's cry. "Hina, my baby! Where have you been?"

"Oh, there she is," Pele says. She sighs as if bored, but she holds tight onto Moana's hand. They both go together to Hina, who looks a little dazed throughout her parent's worried questions. Even Ma'ue on her shoulder looks concerned. "Hina? Are you okay?"

"I was--um..." Hina wobbles, and Ma'ue caws as her owner shakes her head.

Moana steadies Hina with a hand on her shoulder. "How do you feel, Hina? Did you hit your head?"

"No, I went to find Ma'ue," she says, patting the bird. "Nothing happened except..." She scrunches up her face. "There was a bird, I think. On the beach."

"A dead bird," Pele says. "I saw it too."

"Did you touch it?" Moana asks.

"No..." Hina still seems confused. "There was a stone that brings bad luck."

Pele fidgets and takes out her obsidian hairpin as their father asks, "Did you pick it up?"

"No..." She looks around. "I lost my canoe."

"Let's take you to the medicine women," Lahono decides. "We'll find the canoe later."

The three elders look Hina over for any signs of illness or a concussion, but there are no bumps on her head, no fever or strange blemishes, not even a scratch. Pele cooks her sister some normal seaweed soup with fish broth, and Lahono puts Hina to bed early. In the morning she's just fine, and she stays fine for the next one, and seems to have forgotten completely about it, only apologizing briefly for making everyone worry.

They find the canoe beached on another part of shore, after the tide has gone out and wind has blown sand into any traces of footprints. There is no trace of a bird, which Pele insists was huge, and there is no stone, which Pele had not seen.

\- - -

  
"Ma'ue! Ma'ue!"

Hina paddles her canoe in the shallows, shading her eyes from the sun. "Ma'ue! Where are you?"

She gets out of her canoe and climbs onto shore. Ma'ue is hopping circles around a giant feathered mass--a hawk bigger than any she's ever seen. A hawk even bigger than Grandpa. The wings are wider than her canoe. After Ma'ue preens the hawk's feathers and nothing happens, Hina isn't afraid. She is sad. Birds don't lie still on the ground with their wings stretched out like that, unless they're dead or very sick. It looks like a he-bird with its golden feathers and proud head. Even though he's soaked through and messy he's so very pretty.

Ma'ue flies back to her shoulder. "Oh Ma'ue, I'm sorry about your cousin. He looks beautiful and strong! Maybe Auntie will give him a funeral like with Pua."

"I'm not dead." A man's voice comes out of the hawk's throat. There is a great rumble as the hawk rolls to one side. "How do you know my name?"

"Your name is Pua?" Hina asks. "Hi Pua! I'm Hina!"

The bird stares. "No, Maui," he says. "My name is Maui. I guess you don't know me then."

"I'm sorry, Maui. My bird's name is Ma'ue. I was calling her."

"Her?" Maui lifts his head. "Your bird is a boy."

"Oh. Can you tell him I'm sorry for calling him a girl all this time? I don't know how to tell."

Maui opens his beak and a small, strained call comes out. Ma'ue caws, then flits back up to Hina's shoulder and preens her hair. She smiles, then looks back to the hawk. "Are you hurt, Maui?"

"I'm just tired," he says. "And I'm too wet to fly. The storm soaked me through. I'm staying here in the sun until my feathers dry out."

"Ok." Hina looks at the sun. It is strong and high in the sky. Even a giant hawk will dry out in a few hours. "Are you hungry, Maui? I can bring you a fish to eat while you wait."

"Um. Yes, Hina. Thank you."

"Is something wrong?"

"I know a lot of Hinas. And you seem very calm talking to a giant hawk. Normally people run away from me."

"I like birds," she says. "And my whole name is Kahina-li'i."

"Kahina-li'i!" The hawk sighs. "Don't bring me the fish, then. I already ate, thanks to my little brother over there."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I have a stone on me that brings very bad luck, especially to little girls named after the ocean. You two kids are better off leaving me alone."

"My auntie trailed a stone behind her boat for three days and the ocean cleansed its bad luck. Maybe it will work for this one?" She holds out her hand. His talons are empty and she wonders where the stone is. She knows Ma'ue likes to swallow pebbles sometimes, so she reaches for Maui's beak. But he turns his head away.

"This one is too old and strong for that," Maui tells her. "But thank you."

"I haven't helped you," Hina says. "And you're even sadder than you were before."

"I've been sad for a thousand years and ten," he tells her. "I'm used to it. Now go home, Kahina-li'i, and forget about me."

"But--"

\- - -

"Ma'ue!"

Hina paddles her canoe in the shallows, shading her eyes from the sun. "Ma'ue! Where are you?"

She gets out of her canoe and climbs onto shore. Ma'ue is hopping circles around a giant feathered mass. It looks like a hawk--no, a man with a cape of golden feathers. A giant man, as big as grandpa, and at his side is something white, like a pike or... She squints as it gets darker, and wonders how can it be so shadowed when the sun is bright and hot above them--

"Hina!" her father calls, running towards her. There is nothing in front of her, no hawk or man, and she looks around to find her canoe but sees nothing. How did she get so far along the beach? "Hina, my baby!"

\- - -

"Little brother," comes a call from the beach. Ma'ue lifts his head. "Little brother. Please come here."

"Sorry, Hina," Ma'ue tells Hina as he lifts his wings and flies. "He sounds like he's in trouble." He snags a fish from a net, then flies off towards the beach. Resting on the sands, drenched from wingtip to wingtip, is the biggest hawk he's ever seen. "Whoa!" All his instincts on fire, Ma'ue drops the fish and readies his wings for flight.

"Wait, wait, please," the hawk says. "I'm Maui. I just want to ask you a question."

Knowing the giant hawk is Maui... doesn't do much. Very few of Moana's people tell kind stories about Maui. But he is a demigod and something of a brother to birds, so Ma'ue stays. "Okay... What is it?"

"Have you ever had your feathers plucked by Moana of Motunui?"

"No, never."

The hawk sighs. "Worth a shot."

As strange as the question may be, Ma'ue isn't interested in the business of demigods and chiefs. Moana is scary enough, plucking feathers from gulls to repair her cape and crest. She never kills them or keeps them, but it does hurt his cousins and while she is polite, she never speaks quite as gently as Hina. Before the gulls, an old manta ray had told him, the feathers were red, and that creeps Ma'ue out. He wonders if they were bloody or if she simply plucked other birds. He wonders why she switched to gulls.

And the ocean, of all things, talks to Moana, and she just ignores it most of the time. Although he supposes he should be grateful--the ocean was the only one to hear his calls when he was left in the nest, and Moana was the one to rescue him. And, he admits, Moana is much older and her life has been much harder. She had an animal companion too--a pig named Pua who died a few years after he was taken in, who was devoted to her even in old age. Sometimes he finds an 'apanepane who fled Motunui, and they speak of the Silent Fire which forced everyone who wasn't killed to flee, and Moana and her people were the last to go.

Anyway, she put him in the care of Hina, who Ma'ue is utterly grateful to meet. She bathes him with fresh water in the middle of the ocean, feeds him even though he's long since fledged, and set his wing when it was broken once. She's nice to other birds, too--she doesn't even chase off his cousins when they flock to the fishheads she strews in the water, much less pluck them like her strange, stern aunt. Speaking of fish--he picks up the food he'd brought and drops it in front of Maui.

"Here, cousin," Ma'ue says. "You must be hungry and it looks like you won't be flying for a while."

"I'm not hurt, just soaked from the storm." Maui lifts his head and his sharp beak flashes, and the fish is shredded to bits. "Thank you."

"Ma'ue!" comes Hina's call.

"Hina!" Ma'ue cries. "Come here, maybe you can help him out."

\- - -

Lahono is the one who calls for a council meeting later that night, with Moana's family and the elders.

"My daughter Hina came back from the beach acting strangely, talking about a bird with a stone. This island must have a tapu," Lahono tells them. "Or the tapu is on the bird and its stone. Hina always goes to help injured birds, and that's how she stumbled on it."

"We've come to this island for years," Moana tells her. "And the bird and stone weren't there, so the island itself is most likely still safe."

"All birds come to roost somewhere!" Lahono says, impatiently. "This must be its nesting place."

"But we've come at so many different times and we've never seen that bird--"

"Perhaps we cannot see it! Perhaps children are the only ones who can. Twin children, especially."

"That is an old superstition!" Moana snaps. "You're just worried because it was Hina and not Pele!"

And that was the wrong thing to say, she realizes, as everyone in the tent turns to look at her. It is not an angry look, far from it. But she feels a pang of guilt anyway. Who is she to chide people about superstition when, at sixteen, she left home with the heart of Te Fiti beating against her chest?

"We have not left all of the old ways behind," Lahono tells her, stern. "You are a good chief, cousin. I would never say otherwise. But besides my son, you are the youngest person in this room. Our people believe that twins are closer to the world of gods than normal people. And so are birds. And so are you, Moana, no matter how much you try to pretend your sixteenth year never happened!"

"I don't pretend--" Moana sputters. "Who said I--"

"You never speak about it! That is the same thing." Mahalo stirs fitfully and begins crying. Lahono picks her boy up to go, then turns right before she exits the tent. "I am not leaving the village, but I will not stay one more second on this island. Tulo and I will set sail alone with the twins if we have to, and we will wait for you in blue water." With that, she leaves.

"Who else believes that there is a tapu? On the island or the bird?" Moana asks.

Slowly, cautiously, everyone besides her raises a hand.

"And who wants to leave now that Lahono has spoken?"

They keep their hands up.

"I am sorry for arguing in front of you." Moana nods. "We'll leave as soon as possible."

Before the tide goes out, she goes to the twins, eating roasted koa seeds with their father as Lahono prepares the boat.

"Moana!"

"Auntie!"

"Hi girls," Moana says. "I just wanted to know, what kind of bird did you see on the beach?"

Hina shakes her head. "I don't remember, Auntie. A bird I'd never seen before. I didn't get a close look at it." That doesn't make much sense. If they had been on a new island, it might have, but they have come to this one for years. Hina knows all the birds here, and moreover she loves to study unfamiliar birds.

"It was so big," Pele says. "With golden feathers."

If Moana hadn't felt terror when she heard that, she does when Hina winces. "It didn't look like that."

"I know what I saw, Hina."

"Let's not talk about it anymore, dear," Tulo says. "Your sister has a headache."

"It looked like a man," Hina says, in a low quavering voice that stops Moana's heart. "A man and a hawk at the same time. There was a white thing at his side like a pike--ow!"

She winces again, and Moana kneels to cup the girl's face in her hands. "Hina, don't talk about it anymore, please. We think that bird had a tapu, and that's why you can't remember anything. We're leaving as soon as the tide goes out. Come on, let's get to your family's boat." She grabs Hina's hand and leads her off. Tulo throws sand into the fire and takes Pele.

"Auntie?" Hina asks, stumbling to keep up as Moana wades through the shallow waters to Lahono's boat. "Why are we running?"

"It's okay, sweetie. Don't be scared."

"But _you're_ the one who's scared!" Pele exclaims.

 _Yes I am,_ Moana admits, to no one but herself. That hawk was Maui and that stone was his fishhook, and twins _can_ see things other people can't, and she won't be able to breathe until this island vanishes below the horizon and Maui with it. When she finally scrambles onto the motherboat, she sees the line connected to her old canoe and takes out her shark-tooth blade, ready to cut the whole thing loose, the last painful reminder of her first voyage to Te Fiti.

And then the ocean glows, and brings up a wave which slaps the knife out of her hand.

"Ow!" Clutching her right hand, which will be black with bruising in the morning, Moana glares at the wave which stands poised in front of her. "The first time you show up in years and you want me to keep that old boat?"

It nods.

"Why?"

"Moana!" She looks up to see her father. "I heard you yell, are you hurt?"

She looks back to see the ocean, now completely flat and calm. She shakes her head. "I hit my hand on the rudder. I'll be fine."


	5. Moana Sails to Te Fiti

_Moana stands helpless on her little canoe as Maui flies off, as swift and forbidding as a spear. But she wears her chief's white cape and headdress, not her girlhood clothes. And when she cries "Maui! Maui!" it is Hina's voice that comes out of her throat, high and sweet and sad. Hina who burst into tears when she could not start a fire._

_"If you are ready to go home," her grandmother says, in her manta ray form, "I will be with you." So Moana-Hina sticks her oar in the water, and flowers burst from the handle, growing along her arms and her boat until she looks up to find she's in one of the groves of Motunui during the flowering season. But no, she recalls dimly, this is a dream. When she really got back, the island was blighted beyond hope, and it was nighttime--_

_"Don't tell anyone I'm here," she begs. But her mother wears the white chief's cape now, and strokes her hair, coming away with a white gull pin. "Ma'ue," she cries into her mother's shoulder. "Ma'ue, come back!"_

_"Little brother," comes Maui's voice. "Help me."_

_"I like to keep the pretty birds warm!" Hina laughs._

_Maui, as large as a mountain, stands in the middle of the ocean as if he were wading waist-deep on the shore. He dips his fishhook into the water and pulls up Motunui, then opens his mouth and a stream of fresh water gushes from his throat onto the new island._

_"There is water all around us."_

_"Maui! Maui!"_

_"Hina, my baby!"_

_"Hina, are you all right?"_

_"Hina? Where's Hina!"_

\- - -

 _"Hina!"_ Moana wakes up, blankets knotted around her, and she fights to get out of them as her parents wake up.

"Moana?" Sina asks. "What's wrong?"

"Where's Hina?!" She pulls her hair into a bun but foregoes the rest of her chief's attire, scrambling out of the door.

"At home, asleep," Tui says. "It's all right, Moana, it was just a nightmare."

Sina looks out a window, then shakes her head and pulls on Tui's arm. "Lahono's boat has stopped. The torch is lit."

"What?"

That's the last Moana hears before she grabs the sticks and beats the drum, commanding the whole fleet to halt. Then she looks to her old canoe, only to find the rope trailing undone in the water. Panicking, she dives off the ama into the water, swimming between the boats until she reaches her cousin's home. Behind her, Sina goes to the drum and beats the signal for a lost child, and in response all of the warrior ships light their masts and call for the village to awake. A light goes on in every houseboat.

Lahono, hair down and clothes rumpled from sleep, wails Hina's name into the night with her son in her arms. Her husband clutches Pele's arm as if she will disappear too, and Pele's face is pale from shock and she clings to her father's arm, searching the black ocean. Moana climbs onto the boat, and Pele points to her and Lahono and Tulo rush forward.

"Moana!" Tulo cries. "We woke up and saw your canoe sailing away and Hina was gone!"

"Kahina-li'i!" Lahono keens.

"It's okay." It's not okay, but the first thing Tui and Sina had taught her to do was keep everyone calm in an emergency, and sometimes that means lying. "We'll find her, I promise." They had also taught her not to promise anything in an emergency, but she is chief now, so she can do that. "The wind is too calm for her to have gotten far."

And on cue, they hear a seagull cry, and Ma'ue lights onto the mast with the ribbon on her leg fluttering slightly. Though everyone's attention is fixed on her, she caws several times, then flies off.

In the direction of the seagull's flight path, a little flame comes into view, and the tiny white dot lands on what must be Moana's old canoe. Moana feels a surge of gratitude for Hina's quiet determination, she is so glad Hina didn't give up on learning to start a fire properly. She briefly considers swimming to her cousin's daughter, but Tulo lets go of Pele's hand and unfurls their sail. And then Pele, before anyone can stop her, takes hold of the rudder and steers them all to her sister, as straight and sure as anyone could ask.

\- - -

Hina kneels at the front of the canoe with oar in hand. That's a very odd position, but even more so is how the boat took on so much water that the platform is submerged. The water goes up to her waist. She's shivering a little, though the night is not too cold. Even though the sails are unfurled, and a slight wind carries her forward, she's rowing the boat. Moana wonders if something is broken, that the canoe is so sluggish.

"I'm sorry," Hina says, breathing heavily.

"Come here," Lahono begs. "Please, Hina, come to Mommy and Daddy. Are you hurt?"

"Hina, where did you go?" Pele asks. She sounds about to cry herself. Pele rarely cries. "Why did you leave us?"

"Later, Pele." Tulo reaches across the water as the boats meet, and takes his daughter's hand.

"Wait, Daddy--"

Too exhausted to struggle, she turns back to the canoe. With a little weight relieved, the platform rises above the water, and Moana sees a black shape rise with it. Lahono snatches her daughter up and clutches her close. In the scarce torchlight, the figure does not become any clearer.

"Hina?" Moana asks, with a sharp pang of dread in her throat. "What is that? Who have you brought to us?"

"He said he knew you, Auntie," Hina says. "He said--" Moana grabs a torch and lights it from the firepit inside, then holds it up. On her waterlogged canoe, eyes closed and breathing harshly, is a giant golden hawk. "He said his name is Maui."

Moana throws the torch into the water and turns away.

"Auntie," Pele says from behind her parents. "Aren't we going to help him?"

She climbs on the ama furthest from Maui and dives back into the water, swimming to the motherboat.

\- - -

Moana busies herself with coiling all of the ropes on the motherboat into neat piles. Tui comes back from Lahono's boat. "The twins want to know why you're not helping him."

"He ruined the world," Moana says. "He stole the heart of Te Fiti, caused the blight that forced us onto the ocean. He's not a very good person or god."

"I want to know why you're not helping him, either." Tui cautiously looks into her eyes. "You remember that village we fought with, once? They wouldn't even let us land on shore until we gave them fresh water. We who must work for every drop. They weren't very good people, either. But last year when their crops were entirely blighted, you still offered to take them with us before they starved."

"And they refused. And they starved. So did all the others who I offered to take with us." She not-so-accidentally drops her coil of rope and starts from the very beginning. This is the third time. "I'm through helping people who don't want to be helped."

She turns away, and her father waits for a while before sighing and walking off.

 _I'm through being **kind,**_ she thinks. If it were anyone else, she could do it. She could swallow their disagreements, her own dislike of them, she could choose the high path. But Maui left a sixteen year old girl stranded on the ocean with a broken boat, no supplies, a demon in one direction, and a great expanse of ocean in the other. After she'd tried to fix his mistakes, to save her people. After he'd told her he was abandoned as a child, he did the exact same thing.

\- - -

"Auntie?" comes Hina's voice.

"Yes?" Moana smiles, looking up at her cousin's daughter.

Then she sees Hina's hair and clothes are covered in feathers, golden feathers, and her smile falls. She'd once played at being chief when she was about Hina's age, stuck red hibiscus petals in her hair and clothes to pretend she was wearing the chief's cloak and headdress of 'apanepane plumes. Her father saw her and burst into laughter. Her mother sighed deeply and set about combing all of the petals out of her hair, and washing her clothes, stained with yellow and red.

Now the chief's colors are black and white. The only color she sees is blue for the sky and sea, the brown of their boats, and occasionally painted sails. Everything was so much more colorful ten years ago. But the sea washes everything out.

"He's awake," Hina says. "He's asking for you. Aren't you going, Auntie?"

"Wait a second." She picks up a wooden comb and beckons Hina over. "Let's get you cleaned up." The girl looks down at herself and opens her mouth as if to say something, then sits down without a word.

Moana combs Hina's hair, pulling gently at knots and feathers, until all of the feathers make a mound on the floor, enough for a cloak. Most of them are broken, though, unsuitable. She presses her forehead to Hina's, and gathers up the feathers in a cloth before sending her back to her parents.

When Hina's out of sight, Moana dumps the feathers into the water. She doesn't feel a shred of guilt.

\- - -

Moana has assessed all of the trades from warriors to water-bearers.

She has settled every dispute from annulling a marriage between two quarreling spouses in hopes that the families will finally have peace, to settling an argument between fishers over who was at fault for tangling their nets. She has written and rewritten accounts of how much fish to catch, how much water to make, what medicines they are short of and where they will have to sail for the herbs. The three grannies and all of their young apprentices normally have plenty of requests, which she settles one by one, until she's left asking them if there is anything else to do.

Balisaya bluntly tells her that there is nothing left that Moana can do, except for becoming an apprentice herself, and would she go home and stop nagging them _, please_.

Moana tries to lose herself in daily chores. She's scrubbed all the cookpots, sent a cousin to bring water, coiled all the ropes into neat piles, pried off every barnacle and bit of seaweed clinging to the hull, and even sanded the oar on her old canoe until the engraving on it disappeared.

If nothing else comes up soon, she'll have to answer the question from Lahono and her family of why she won't speak to Maui.

Then her mother comes in and says, "Lupa is here to speak to you."

Grateful, Moana stands up. "Let him in." At the sight of her lead water-bearer, she smiles. "Hello, Lupa, what can I do for you?" She hopes it is something long and involved and tedious. At this point, she would watch water boil.

Lupa sits down, and she mirrors him. "I just had a question, Chief."

_Please don't be about Maui._

"Do you remember when we first left Motunui?"

She doesn't much care for that, either, but at least it's not about Maui. "Yes. I was so angry at you, and I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry. You're the chief."

"But chieftains have duties to their people," Moana says. "We must lead, but not blindly. For people to follow us, we must listen to them. I didn't listen to you."

Lupa smiles. "You were so young," he tells her, and suddenly Moana sees gray in his hair. He was middle-aged, perhaps in his thirties. "We thought we knew better than you."

"I don't think any of us knows any better, even now. I haven't found an island for all of us. I didn't expect we would grow so much..." Moana suddenly feels tears well up, and she blinks them away. "My father says... we will never find an island like Motunui."

"Didn't you hear yourself?" Lupa asks. "We have _grown_. More than we ever did on Motunui. Look at all the children."

She looks out the window. There are children on the backs of their pet dolphins, and she suppresses the urge to call for them to be careful.

"Maybe you don't remember how it used to be. You were a child yourself. So I will tell you." She nods and listens. "It used to be that every family would have one, maybe two in a whole generation. It was terrible if a couple could not conceive, but we were used to it. That was the way of things. Now every family's boat has three children or more. Before, I would never have expected triplets! And now five children is not uncommon."

"And all those children need food and clothes and water... They've grown up on boats. No space for them to play... There are sharks, you know. Poisonous jellies, poisonous plants, sea snakes. They could drown."

"But there are also dolphins!" Lupa exclaims. "And seagulls, and manta rays, and plenty of fish to eat. Is growing up on the sea a bad thing? Your very name is Moana; I remember you ran off to the ocean every chance you could. But now that we're here, you're the only one who seems sad."

"I made Oni a promise I couldn't keep. I made everyone a promise I couldn't keep, that we would find another island."

"No, Moana, you never promised that!" Why is he so happy? "Remember? I myself asked how long it would take for us to find another island, and you held your head high and said you didn't know."

"That wasn't any better."

"While you were gone, your father insisted that the island would return to normal. Your father meant well, your father had experienced droughts and famine before, but he still refused to face the truth--that this blight would never go away. Motunui was dying. None of us wanted to face it, and we followed your father because he told us what we wanted to hear. You did not. You had us sail away before our island collapsed around us. And while it is hard and we don't have an island to call home, we still have the village. You saved us, Moana."

"But there are so many other villages--"

"They are not your responsibility," Lupa tells her, firmly. "We are. And you have done everything you could to help us survive. There isn't a day that goes by where we are not utterly grateful to have you as chief."

"It is my duty--"

_"Thank you, Moana."_

She lowers her head as tears stream down her face, and waves for Lupa to go. He does. That doesn't make her feel any better. When her mother comes in, she asks, "What did he say?" Was it about Maui, is the unspoken question.

"Thank you," she sobs. "He just said thank you."

Her mother smiles, and holds her until she calms down.

\- - -

If Moana is anything like the chief she was when she was sixteen years old, she must face the truth. The truth is, Moana knows in her heart of hearts, she has not done everything she could to help them survive. The one thing left for her to do, the one last chance she has not taken is waiting. On her cousin's boat, tended to by a nine year old girl who's maybe a quarter of his size.

Ten years ago, her father was chief, and she was a child. When she told her village the truth they did not want to face, she became chief.

Now, she is chief, and another child tells her a truth she does not want to face.

She is not her father. She gets up.

She doesn't bother wiping her tears away--they will vanish in the sea. Nor does she put on her chief's cape and headdress, as she might have done to look more impressive. She puts her hair up and dives from the deck into the waters, towards her cousin's boat, and to her surprise a wave surges underneath her, carrying her to Lahono's boat. Her cousin comes out to find the ocean deposit her, dripping, onto the deck. Lahono turns to go back inside but Moana says, "Let me talk to him alone."

So Lahono calls her children and husband. A hush goes over the water as Moana disappears inside.

Maui is still asleep, and still a hawk. That's strange. The hawk form with its broad wings can barely squeeze through the door. And he has plenty of smaller forms as he showed to her. Why wouldn't he just switch to something like an iguana, or even his human form? Moana looks closer and sees some of his feathers are still missing, with little pinions growing back in slowly. His right wing has been splinted. He has spent a long time in this form, and it seems he expects to spend even longer in it.

"You can't change back."

Maui blinks awake, and heaves a deep sigh. "No."

Moana sits down, and can't find anything to say.

"That one little girl is so sweet," he says, which isn't something she expected. "Kahina-li'i. She kept saying sorry when she plucked all my broken feathers, so new ones could grow back. She put a blanket over me even though... well, feathers. Natural blanket. The other one thought it was funny when I screeched. I don't like her. Are they your sister's kids?"

"My cousin's daughters."

"They call you auntie."

She rolls her eyes. "Because first-cousin once removed just glides off a nine year old's tongue."

"Right." Maui gets to his feet, which is a pretty awkward motion for a bird. Some of the impressiveness of being a giant hawk is lost. "So, I get it. I get why you didn't want to talk to me at first. But, uh, you're surprisingly not angry at me now, and I'm just wondering why."

"It's been ten years," Moana says. "I'm over it."

Maui waits.

"Mostly."

And with that, they establish something of a truce. She doesn't have to like it, or watch Hina gently remove the splint and smooth his feathers into place and pluck a few more broken ones with more strength than a nine-year-old girl should have. Or perhaps it's not that difficult to pluck feathers at all.

\- - -

Moana is at the rudder in her chief's white cape and headdress when Maui launches into flight, and lands on deck beside her.

"Chief Moana Waialiki of Motunui, I greet you."

She nods. The formality comforts her. She doesn't have to make small talk. She doesn't have to ask how Maui's wing is healing.

They just have to work together, one last time.

"I am the demigod Maui of the wind and sea. I am at your mercy, for I cannot use my fishhook to change forms." If he was human, this is where he would bow low. As a hawk, he spreads his wings to counterbalance his bowing forward. She does not, she remind himself, need to sympathize when she sees his right wing with the fishhook pattern is slightly crooked. "I beg you, let me board your boat. Sail me across the great ocean so I can restore the heart of Te Fiti, who will repair my hook and return your island as well."

"And where, demigod, will we find the heart?" Moana asks. "I gave it back to the ocean when we parted ways and asked it to choose another."

"It did choose another," Maui says. He opens his beak, and a small green stone falls out of his throat. "But the one it chose cannot restore the heart without you."

She looks at the ocean, and a great wave crests but remains poised in the air.

"I have no heir and I cannot leave my people without a leader," she says.

This is diplomacy, the art of compromise. It was the most difficult of all the aspects of chiefdom to learn, mostly because no one is truly satisfied even when it works. It is a little like haggling, which generally leaves a bad taste in her mouth. "But my warriors are strong, and I will give you someone to act in my stead." She looks to Alika, father of Pele's best friend Akamu. "Alika!"

He doesn't seem happy, but all he says is, "If you tell me to go, Chief, I will go."

"The highest honor lies upon your shoulders, Alika Kanamuo," Moana says. "Sail to Te Fiti and restore her heart with Maui."

He bows his head. "Yes, Chief."

In the morning, Alika takes his slim warrior boat and sets sail. Maui hesitates, but lifts off and curves his flight path in a wide arc to steer him onto the right direction. And then Moana hears children crying from across the water--Akamu is only nine. His sisters are seven and two. Alika's wife does not weep because she is a warrior's wife. But if heartbreak had a sound, it would match the look on her face.

"Wait!" she says. She runs to the drum and beats it. "Wait, Alika!"

The ocean halts his boat.

"I must think more."

\- - -

She tries to send other people with Maui, setting up a test maneuver as close to the landscape as they remember. A circle of boats with a gap in it forms the barrier reef, the motherboat is anchored in the middle to symbolize Te Fiti, and a group of warriors sling rocks at whoever is in the canoe while they sail.

The problem with warrior boats is that, in an effort to reduce weight, they got rid of the oars and learned to steer sharply by moving crew from one side to the other. And the high masts and large sails provide giant targets for Te Ka, and leave no room for Maui to rest out of the water. When they use Moana's old canoe, they have no finesse with the oar and dodge clumsily at best.

The farmer Oni is most eager to restore the blight and return to his precious coconut trees, but after ten years of sailing a boat with seaweed dragging behind him, he cannot keep up with Maui. When the demigod glides slowly enough to keep him in sight, they both get pelted with rocks. Her father gets on the smaller craft and has the opposite problem. Too used to steering the motherboat, which needs three men at the rudder, his hand is too heavy on the thin oar. In a few minutes, when he tries to dodge a volley of rocks, he falls out of the canoe.

"We have a whole fleet of people who can sail," Moana insists. "I will test every single volunteer."

"They can sail their own boats," Maui tells her, for the first time looking smug. "But not the only canoe you can spare. What, kept that one all to yourself?"

"No one's sailed that boat in ten years besides my cousin's daughters, and they are not coming. Even I was sixteen."

"So who taught them on that boat?" Moana crosses her arms, fuming. Maui spreads one wing, the right one with the fish hook, and tells her, "Come on, Chief. Get in and show me what you've got."

She looks to her parents, who look unhappy but resigned. She looks to her cousins, none of whom meet her eyes. The twins look pale and frightened. All of the other volunteers are from specialized trades. If only--if only she had a few months to train someone on her old boat, if only they had a few weeks, even.

But there is no time.

Moana jumps down from the motherboat to the deck of her old canoe, unties the sheet and grasps it firmly. With all of the repairs and fine-tuning, the boat responds like a living thing, slowing and speeding up or turning at the slightest twitch of her hand. The wood has been warmed by the sun. She can feel the surge of the ocean through her feet, sending a quiver all the way up to her jaw. And despite her hesitation, she grins.

When the stones are thrown, Moana dodges so none of the barrage hits her, the sails, or the boat.

When the gap in the reef comes near, she fills the sail as much as possible, jumps onto the back end, and pumps the oar hard to lift the rest of the boat out of the water. There are gasps when people see what she has done; with white cape and black hair streaming, the boat leaps through the gap. Barely skimming the surface of the water after that, she reaches the motherboat in a few minutes, leaps onto deck, climbs the great mast, and waves to signal her completion of the course. Maui lights on the mast next to her.

"That wasn't sailing!" Maui laughs and laughs, but there is nothing spiteful in his tone at all. "Oh, Chief, that wasn't sailing--that was _flying!_ And you're talking to a bird!"

Moana slides down the mast onto the deck, and looks out at the people surrounding her. None of the amazement has survived on their faces. There is no applause. Only apprehension, fear, worry.

"That was amazing, Chief," Alika tells her. But his congratulations are very reserved.

"Moana," Tui says. "You really are a master wayfinder."

"Well." She shrugs. "I've had ten years. I guess I have to go now, unless someone can beat that." And she tries to laugh.

No one joins her. Sina bursts into tears.

\- - -

"You must get your affairs in order," Tui says, his tone brooking no argument. "We will follow you as far as we can."

"Thank you," Moana responds. Quietly, so only he can hear: "Daddy."

That's when she first sees her father cry.

\- - -

They steer east, into the sun. That is what Moana remembers. When ashes fall in the air around them, she calls for a village counsel at dawn, and spends the rest of the night sewing together white seagull feathers and all of the pearls she can find. She doesn't have to barter for them--the oyster divers give them away with tears in their eyes, as if it is for a funeral instead of the presentation of the chief's heir.

When she is done with it, she steers the motherboat back to the center of the fleet and calls Kahina-li'i. With the headdress of white feathers and pearls, she presents her cousin's daughter as the next chief of their people. Nobody questions it, but there is no cheering as they had done when Moana was presented. The congratulations are perfunctory; the smiles are mostly for Hina's benefit. She will make a good chief, when she is ready. Now, Hina is still afraid; on the edge of the motherboat, she clings to Moana's hand and looks into the crowd for Pele, who has Ma'ue on her shoulder.

In the uneasy murmur, Moana tries to slip away, but Hina shakes her head and clutches her around the waist while Pele dives into the water with a huge splash. Before she knows it, she's got two pairs of small arms wrapped around her.

"Don't go, Auntie, please!" Pele begs her. She has never said please on her own. "I smell smoke so thick it hurts! There's anger everywhere in that place! Don't you see the ashes in the sky?"

"I don't want to be chief!" Hina cries, her first rebellion in nine years. " _You're_ the chief!"

"I have to go," Moana tells them. "Maui must restore the heart of Te Fiti, and with that we will restore Motunui. When this is done, we can go home."

" _This_ is our home!" Hina shrieks, stamping her foot on the motherboat and holding tighter when Moana tries to leave. "It's not home without you! Don't go, don't go!"

And the twins both dissolve into tears. This is the first time they have ever been in agreement. But they are only nine--of course they don't understand why she must leave. This is the last leg of the quest she began when she was sixteen, and now she must finish it. That is what her soul truly hungers for. Moana kneels and holds the girls until they calm down. Her parents stand tall, but Sina's face shines with tears as she performs hongi.

"My little minnow," Sina whispers before they part. "Do not let this be the last time. A mother should not survive her child."

"Of course not," Moana answers. But children have died, from starvation in the first hard year, or drowning, or shark attacks. They should not have had to flee Motunui's blight in the first place.

She does not weep, not even when her father hugs her silently. But she stays in the embrace for a long time before she parts. The comfort she finds is diminished by how she notices the wrinkles on her father's face, and the gray in her mother's hair.

When the last of her fleet disappears--officially, it is now Hina's, but more likely her mother and father will resume chiefdom--her heart sinks. But even then she does not weep. She has a job to do.

\- - -

It goes as Moana expected. She is taller and stronger than she was at sixteen--she gets past the barrier reef, and climbs the mountains. But at the peak, she looks down to see a gaping hole in the sandbed, shaped like a sleeping woman. She looks further, but there is only the barrier reef, and ocean, and Maui in the distance. And Te Ka behind her.

Te Fiti is gone.

Ten years. Ten years of humiliation at coming home with her tail between her legs, and the suffering as her wounded pride healed one bit at a time.

Ten years of constantly watching over her shoulder for Maui, vengeful or otherwise.

Ten years of not allowing herself to cry until she is sure no one can see, of trying to look strong even if she doesn't feel it. So that her people could be strong despite the famine, the illness, the pain that was not their fault. Of watching other villages crumble beneath the blight, of wishing she could do something about it besides flee to the ocean with her people, again and again. She knew that there was no reason to feel guilty, that they were not her responsibility, but she had still felt like a coward, deep down inside.

And now the only thing that she can do about it has disappeared.

_"Te Fiti is **gone!** "_

All hope of restoring Motunui, of all the other islands, is gone with her.

A keen rips out of her straight from her feet--or from further, maybe it comes from the earth itself grieving the loss of its Mother Island. Wailing like a newborn child, Moana tears her headdress off, and the twine that keeps her hair in its bun so her hair tumbles around her. Maui flies over at once, asking what happened. She doesn't have to tell him, for he looks down at the hole in the ocean and forgets to land before he stops beating his wings. He tumbles to the hard, scorched earth and rights himself.

"Where did she go?" Maui looks to the barrier reef but there is nothing besides Te Ka's angry red eyes and mouth.

Moana takes a deep breath, and searches for her twine. "It doesn't matter," she says. She puts her hair up again, adjusts her headdress, and remembers how calm her grandmother had been, dancing in the shallows with manta rays at her feet. But then, Moana thinks, Grandma Tala had had a whole lifetime behind her, from respected chieftess to village crazy lady, according to her father. Moana is still twenty-six and reeling from her second great failure in ten years.

She deserved a good cry. It felt good.

She gets up and looks for her canoe. Though she knows it was torn to pieces, she wants to go home, if nothing else but to spend the rest of her days among people she knows. The ocean has not failed them. She wonders why, no matter how terrible the islands got, the blue-water plants and animals continued on as if nothing happened.

"Your canoe's completely wrecked," Maui says. He spreads his wings. "Here. I can take you back to your people this time."

She climbs onto his back, as if he was a dolphin. She remembers the first time they saw the blue-gray animals, how they had led the fleet to fish and the grateful fisherman had thrown part of their catch back to them. Pele had glanced over the boat and played for a little while before returning to her human friends. Hina slid into the water and swam with the calves until she was laughing, riding on their backs as if they had been friends all their lives.

When she's got a firm grip on his feathers, she says, "Thank you."

"It's my duty as the hero of all," Maui tells her. "Just hold on tight, Chief."

Te Ka has not stopped watching. As soon as Maui lifts off, a ball of molten earth flies their way. He dodges easily, untiring, and the ocean assists them by absorbing the brunt of the blows until they are halfway to the barrier reef. Straight above Te Ka, they are granted a respite from the barrage as the lava results in splashes of water, too painful for Te Ka. And Moana looks down at the demon, wondering why it wants the heart so badly.

The demon has no clothes, no legs, not even a face--but suddenly Moana notices the curve of wide hips and long, slender fingers. The smoke shifts like hair blown in the wind, and the moves become infused with a brutal grace, like a dancer telling the story of a vicious battle.

Great warriors are also great dancers, her father said. Both dancers and warriors must climb the great mast of the motherboat in their training, to develop their strength.

"Wait," Moana says, as the beat of Maui's great wings clears the air around them. "Stop, Maui!"

"There's nowhere to land!"

"Hover for a moment!" she cries, looking down. The only spots of color are Te Ka's eyes, mouth, and hands, but at the center of its chest is a spiral of fire. Get the heart to the spiral, Maui said. She looks back at the hole in the ocean floor, then at Te Ka, smoking from the mouth and clawing upward with its great hands for the heart. "Maui?" she asks. "Do you see that pattern on its chest?"

He looks down and gasps. "A spiral! It's Te Fiti, Te Ka _is_ Te Fiti--" A screeching howl is their only warning before a flaming mass of lava nearly hits Maui's wing, and he backtracks back to the hole in the ocean. "Well, we know where Mother Island went," Maui says. "How are we going to get close, though?"

Maui can fly, but dodging is harder with Moana's weight. The ocean is Moana's only defense from Te Ka's fiery barrage, but without a boat it also traps her where the Mother Island used to be. She is not untiring like Maui and she cannot swim to Te Ka. Her father's words from a long time ago resurface in her thoughts: _I hope you will continue to be kind_. And her mother's words, from later: _Remember your soul._

"I know the way," she says. "Maui."

"Yeah, Chief?" He bows as if expecting her to get on his back again.

"Fly to my people and tell them to go to Motunui."

"Once we're done? Got it."

"No." She shakes her head. "Fly now."

"Without you?"

"You can come back to Te Fiti when you've finished."

"But Moana--!"

She glares. Maui spreads his wings and flies through the air like a spear. Without the heart, Te Ka ignores him.

To the ocean Moana says, "Make way." She removes the heart from her necklace and holds it in her right hand. She puts her chin up high. She clamps her lips tight together so a scream of fear will not leave her throat, blinks fast so tears of panic won't fall. "Make way for Te Fiti."

And it does.

And Te Ka screeches, running on all fours, tearing up the ground beneath her.

The smoke envelops her, a choking whirlwind, covering her clothes in black. Coughing, Moana can only see the heart glowing green in front of her. Even as her vision goes black, she continues holding the heart out. A great hand reaches out with the heat of a thousand suns, snatching the heart up. The worst pain she has ever felt sears her fingers, and slowly spreads to the rest of her arm, igniting her clothes and her hair in its bun and her headdress disintegrates instantly. Moana bites her tongue to keep from screaming.

Te Ka, crouched over like a starved animal, presses her heart back into her own chest.

The sea rushes around Moana, putting out the horrible fire, but she has no breath to hold. She coughs black soot and inhales brine. An urgent coil of water surrounds her, lifting her to the surface as fast as possible. Moana smiles in relief, not struggling to breathe but thankful the fire is gone. It makes sense that the sea which had called to her all her life is what eases her last moments. She would have been buried at sea anyway.

 _It's all right, Moana._  She thinks it to both herself and the ocean she was named after.

Her chief's cape of feathers streams around her, charred yet still whole, and part of her wonders why it didn't burn. Was it too wet to burn, after all those years of sea spray?

_The heart of Te Fiti is restored. My parents will lead until Hina is of age. My people can go home._

Her face breaks the surface. She makes no move to swim to shore, simply lies there cradled in the current. Her eyes are full of ash, but she imagines the blue sky above her, of the people sailing to Motunui. She imagines the twins growing into beautiful young women. Hina would be a good chief, and Pele would do whatever she wanted. Oh, everyone would grieve terribly at first--but they would be safe, no longer running from blight.

She is twenty-six years old. She has finished what she started after ten long years.

Through the ashes, a green light shines, the last thing she sees before passing out. Strange as it is, the light does not worry her; she has no regrets.

_I'm not afraid to die._


	6. Te Fiti Restored

After their chief leaves with Maui flying ahead, Motunui sees nothing besides fire and smoke.

In the end, that is all they can bear to watch. The flames could easily engulf an island, and the rain of ash falls even more heavily on all their boats. No one pays it any mind, though their sails and decks are blackened and it coats their skin. They wipe their eyes clear to keep staring at the spot where Moana and Maui have disappeared into the distance.

Pele weeps silently in fear throughout the whole day. She has never been afraid of fire until seeing this one. And when a great scream tears through the sky, she puts her hands over her ears and runs into the motherboat to hide. While she is the first one, she is not the only one. Sina goes after her, and soon Tui follows. Then everyone retreats when an even bigger plume of smoke rises, shot through with the whiteness of steam.

The only one left outside is Hina. She stares into the horizon, pale as the seagull pin in her hair. Her tears make two light tracks down her face. Ma'ue is covered in soot too, but stays on her shoulder without ruffling his feathers.

"Hina," Lahono calls. "This is not something young girls should see."

"I'm not scared."

"Kahina-li'i, come inside _now._ "

"But look--" And she points to the horizon where a golden bird appears. A wave of clear ocean water swells in front of her and splashes down gently, washing all the soot off and leaving her dry once it spills back overboard. Ma'ue puffs up and shakes his sodden feathers, to no avail. The ocean splashes him again. Pele refuses to come out until Hina laughs. "Look, it's Maui! He's coming back!"

"He's back?" Tui asks. He and Sina come out at once.

"Is Moana with him?"

"Hey little sister!" Maui lands on the deck. "Listen--Moana gave an order for you all to go to Motunui. I'm going back for her once Te Fiti's heart is restored."

Sina and Tui exchange a look. His tone is casual, but not as cheerful as it could be, and one must never take the words of a trickster at face value. Moreso when Hina is here. He seems to have taken a shine to the girl who saved him. He uses none of his tricks with her, and he can tell the twins apart without their hairpins.

"How do we know Te Fiti is restored?" Sina asks.

Maui looks behind him, then spreads his right wing, the one with the fishhook. A green glow like sunrise appears, and the sky turns from gray to a deep blue. The ashes raining down on them along with the soot on their skin turn to petals of all colors, gently streaming down. "I'm thinking that's how. Man! I just got here." But he dips his beak into the water, puffs up ridiculously to shake the flowers off his wings. "Well, off I go--"

"Maui!" Sina calls. This stops him in his tracks and she goes on, "Bring my daughter back. Please."

He is a hawk, so Sina cannot read any expression he makes. She wonders if his human face would be as unreadable as his tone when he says, "I will." And while it is the most sincere, it is solemn, and he still does not say whether Moana is all right, or even alive.

"Are we going to Motunui?" Tulo asks Tui and Sina. 

Sina shakes her head. "Without her, we wouldn't be alive to see this. I go to Motunui with Moana or not at all."

"Sina..." Tui reaches for her, and she pulls away and sits on the edge of the motherboat. "If Te Fiti is restored, our home is, too. Moana gave an order--"

"I am her mother. Go on without me if you must. Give me a boat and I will wait here until Maui comes back with Moana. That is final." But her voice quavers. "I looked away because I was afraid of Te Ka, but I will not look away again, even if that demon comes here. I will not leave my only daughter behind."

Sina watches after Maui, shaking, until Tui sits down next to her and takes her hand, tracing the delicate tattoos around her wrists.

"So we'll wait. We're her parents. We don't have to listen to her." She laughs, and leans into his shoulder, and her laughs turn to sobs. Tui puts an arm around her as the rest of their family on the motherboat comes outside. Tui calls, "We wait for our daughter! Sail ahead to Motunui if you wish--we don't know how long it will take!"

The wind rises westward towards Motunui, but everyone pulls up their sails and sets anchor.

"We wait for our chief!" is the call across the water from boat to boat, starting with the loyal water-bearers.

And the wind stills, as if it heard them.

\- - -

Moana thinks she hears her mother, and opens her eyes.

She is greeted with a clear blue sky and greenery all around her, soft grass underneath her skin--as if she was resting in a large patch. It's so soft--she hasn't come across grass so fine and fragrant since Motunui. It was called cradlegrass, because they wove baby's blankets and stuffed cushions with it.

Reluctantly, Moana lifts her head from the grass and looks around to see the barrier reef where Te Ka had dwelled. She decides she is not dead. Maybe she would have been born again in the same place that she died, but whatever animal she would be in her next life would have been a sea creature, tattoo or not. Though she feels no pain, she checks just to make sure. She is naked, from her hairless scalp to her feet, and--the most strange--the skin of her right hand is blackened up to the elbow. Even her fingernails are black.

"That's weird," she comments, poking at her hand. It still feels like skin, and she can move it without pain. It's just... all black. "Why is my hand black?"

"Oh, come on!" comes a voice she hasn't heard for ten years. "You nearly die after fighting Te Ka, and the first thing you notice is your hand is black? You could have been tattooed in your sleep any old day."

"Grandma?" She fights her way out of the long grass and finds her grandma kneeling beside her, a soft smile. Nudity and strange new markings can wait--she hugs her grandmother hard. "Grandma! Oh, I missed you!"

"What for?"

"I haven't seen you since you led me home."

"Child, I have been with you all this time. You simply didn't open your eyes."

The ground shifts underneath her, and Moana falters as a giant green hand appears underneath her feet. Moana turns to see a woman's face with long hair--but larger than the motherboat, composed of moss and flowers.

"Te Fiti!"

She throws herself down on Te Fiti's hand, wishing she at least had her hair to cover herself. The ground shifts again, but she keeps her eyes shut until Grandma Tala clears her throat. When she cracks an eyelid open, she sees a tall woman in a long dress woven of flowers and living grass, and a haku lei of many flowers around her head. Her hair spills down her back all the way to the ground, to several feet behind her, like jasmine vines growing wild. Besides being the most beautiful woman Moana has ever seen, her eyes are green as grass.

Te Fiti kneels before Moana with a bewildering grace. With soft, whispering motions, she moves her dancer's hands as if weaving an invisible cloth, and the grass responds by curling around Moana's body to form a skirt and shirt. She touches Moana's scalp. All of her hair grows back at once, and she suppresses the urge to scratch the fierce itch. Then she looks down to see the grass part and reveal a black thing arising--her chief's cape, whole and mended except for the color, as if the soot had stained them.

Te Fiti nods, then looks at Moana's blackened hand and covers it with her palm, as soft and warm as petals in the sun. Her hand is so much larger that it looks like a mother's hand over a child's.

Despite the touch, nothing happens. The goddess sadly shakes her head, and lowers her eyes in apology.

"The gods cannot undo what another god has done," Grandma tells Moana. "Even if they themselves did it. The ocean saved Te Ka's fire from consuming your life--but your hand was the first to burn. That is why it is black, granddaughter." She claps Moana on the shoulder. "About time you got a tattoo! And from a goddess herself."

It would be impolite to refuse a gift from a goddess, so Moana says, "Thank you, Te Fiti. Your kind gift is greatly appreciated."

With a radiant smile, Te Fiti holds her arms out and steps forward to Moana. Chief and goddess press their foreheads together, and Moana inhales the scent of a thousand different flowers. Something inside her expands, a thing which had been still and silent these past ten years--like a well-preserved seed in a drought, drinking up the first rainfall. When they part, Te Fiti herself ties the black chief's cape around her shoulders.

With her green grass clothing, the cape makes her hair seem as long as Te Fiti's, wavy and shining all the way to her feet. She likes it. And for the first time in ten years, Moana decides to leave her hair down.

\- - -

"Oh, Chief! You're not dead," comes Maui's voice. "Figured. You're too stubborn to die."

Te Fiti puts her hands on her hips. (That too is graceful.) Maui looks terrified. But he walks forward awkwardly on his talons and bows low, saying, "Mother Island, I have no excuse for what I did. I'm so sorry--I am too ashamed to even beg your forgiveness. You may kill me if that is your desire. I..." He swallows. "I deserve it."

Te Fiti stretches her arm out. Maui closes his eyes and Moana looks away, holding her grandmother's hand. But the goddess simply touches a finger to the black hook on the inside of Maui's wing. A blue light shines and there is a clatter, and then Maui looms over the goddess, restored to human form. He looks exactly as Moana remembers, but somehow not as intimidating as he once was. Perhaps it is how Moana has aged ten years while Maui has not.

Maui's eyes fill with tears and he throws himself to the ground again. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

Te Fiti kneels to lift Maui's head with both hands, looking into his eyes. She wipes his tears away much as a mother would, and then they press foreheads together, more solemn than the hongi she had performed with Moana. Maybe Te Fiti is one of the gods who raised him--or maybe she is truly so kind as to forgive a demigod for stealing her heart. Once finished, the goddess gestures to the ground underneath Maui's right arm. The long grass parts to reveal Maui's fishhook, whole and new, but also jet black as Moana's hand.

\- - -

A wind rises westward to Motunui.

Moana finds her boat on the shoreline, repaired and polished to a shine and adorned with flowers. Smiling, she hauls the boat into the water herself and remarks, "You can come with us, you know. I don't feel like killing you anymore."

"Eh, I've had plans that were on hold for a thousand and ten years," Maui says. "But hey, I might as well see this island you've been--wait, you don't want to kill me anymore?"

"That's what I said, yeah."

"I'm a demigod, Chief. You can't kill me."

"You were at my mercy, remember?" Moana slaps him on the shoulder. "Poor Maui, afraid of a chief with a thirst for vengeance like Te Ka!"

"Hey, I was being polite! It's called diplomacy--"

The horizon is suddenly broken by masts and ships, with all their sails unfurled.

"Maui!" she shouts. "I told you to tell them to go to Motunui!"

"I did, I did!" Maui holds his hands up.

Moana sails them to the motherboat, the first of the fleet, and kneels behind Maui to tie the canoe to its place. From above them, people whisper, "Look at that boat! It's made of flowers!" Then, as Maui jumps up and uses his fishhook to catch the edge of the deck: "Who is that?" She rolls her eyes as someone else responds, "Maui, it's Maui! See his fishhook! He's back!"

"No, behind him," comes her father's voice. "Who is she?" Moana raises an eyebrow and climbs into the motherboat behind Maui, who quickly stands aside for her and bows his head. A hush comes over the fleet as she looks at her people, searching the massive crowd on the motherboat for her family. Tui comes out of the crowd, takes one look at Moana, then falls to his knees. "Te Fiti!" And everyone else falls down too, leaving Moana standing perplexed.

"Te Fiti?" she asks, looking down at herself. Her clothes and loose hair can't have made that much of a difference. "No--it's me! It's Moana."

"Moana?" Her father tilts his head up, and looks closely into her eyes, and laughs. "Oh! Never mind then." He stands up, brushing himself off and swatting the others on the shoulders. "Get up, get up! It's just my daughter. You people, honestly! Brand new clothes and a tattoo!"

But he looks at her eyes again, and Moana throws her hands up in confusion. "What, Dad?!"

He shrugs.

Everyone gets up and shuffles away, pretending to be uninterested, and Moana laughs harder than she has in years. Then the wind is knocked out of her by a pair of small arms around her belly.

"Auntie! Don't ever do that again!"

"Pele!" she cries, still smiling as she tries to shuffle them both to a safer spot. "Not so close to the edge!"

"That's Hina," Pele says, pouting from a few feet away. But she walks right up and throws her arms around Moana's waist, and Moana feels tears seep through her new skirt. "You were gone for so long."

"I know." She strokes Pele's hair underneath the obsidian pin. "I'm sorry."

"I heard a big voice like thunder saying terrible things," Pele goes on, crying. "And when everything went quiet and Maui flew back--we thought you died. We thought he was bringing us your bones."

"Well, I didn't die." Moana loosens their little hands at last, and returns both girls to their parents. Then she faces her own mother and father. "I told Maui to tell you to--"

"Go to Motunui?" Sina asks. "Yes, he told us that."

"But he is not our chief," Tui continues, smiling proudly. "We wanted to wait for you."

"We knew you'd survive," Balisaya says. "Mostly."

Moana ignores the last word, ties her canoe to the motherboat, and beats the drum. The ships part to let them through, and Moana cries, "To Motunui!"

"Aue, aue! _Motunui!_ " the cry goes up. Cheers and laughter accompany them. And also, "Moana's back! She did it!"

"We're going home!"

\- - -

It's strange, walking along the paths of her childhood.

Motunui seems smaller than it was before, or perhaps that is because of all the overgrown plants. Moana has to bring a long pike with her to clear the brush. But the houses feel huge, even as empty frameworks after so many years of rain and sun. After ten years at sea, space became a luxury that was often done without, even on the motherboat.

Moana watches the children carefully, especially the ones under ten years old. Hina and Pele are happy, but only because everyone else is rejoicing. They like the feasting, the candy, the songs, and the lack of lessons. Homes are being restored, paths are being cleared, boats are being fixed, and people make food they remember from ten years ago. When Hina and Pele speak of Motunui, the homeland they have never seen, they compare it to other islands they have landed on.

 _But what would I do about it? Tell them not to?_ She shakes her head, reminding herself that the boats are the homes of the twins, where they grew up on seaweed soup and fish. It will take time for them to get used to Motunui, perhaps even more than ten years.

And they have time now. So she holds off addressing it.

\- - -

Maui helps them with the most labor intensive parts of their village, hauling boats onto shore for repairs or felling large trees for timber. And while it is helpful, Moana wonders why he is troubling himself with such menial labor. Eventually the village is left with tasks that are too delicate for a strongman's hands, and yet he does not leave. He often shapeshifts and disappears into the forest or goes out to sea, but he usually comes back before sunset and shrugs off any questions with 'Demigod business.'

He has another tattoo, Moana notices--she glimpses a hawk, bowed before a tall woman crowned with flowers and a spiral of light across her chest. But he says nothing about it and she doesn't ask.

Finally, she comes out of her half-finished house early in the morning to find Maui, standing with a bag in hand.

"Chief Moana--wow!" He jumps back as she puts her hands on her hips. "You really do look like Te Fiti when you stand like that." Moana raises an eyebrow. "Anyway, I noticed you were missing your headdress, and... I figured, the least I could do was help you make another one." He opens the bag to reveal it filled to the brim with pure white feathers.

"But it takes years to collect enough feathers!" Moana exclaims. "Even for a headdress, and even if you use gull feathers instead of 'apapane. Mine took at least three!"

"Well, I was a hawk for the past ten years, and I made a lot of bird friends," he says. Then he clears his throat, and bows his head. "Chief Moana Waialiki of Motunui, I did you great harm when I abandoned you on the sea ten years ago. I do not ask for your forgiveness--I only wish that you know I regret what I did."

She pauses. "What? You're not doing this in front of people so they can see how great you are at apologizing?" Immediately, she knows it is too spiteful and not chiefly at all. But Maui accepts it.

"I tried to go back right away," he confesses. "Before the sun rose, I flew back to find you and say I was sorry. It was too much for a sixteen year old girl. I should have known that, I should have guided you home. I would have. But you'd sailed off by then. I went to Te Ka, but of course you weren't there, and she didn't even look at me. I guess since I didn't have her heart, she didn't care. Then I tried to turn into a shark to follow your trail to Motunui, but that was when I learned I couldn't shapeshift. By the time I got to Motunui, you were gone with everyone else. So for ten years I flew from island to island, asking anyone who didn't run from me if they'd seen Moana of Motunui."

Moana's throat tightens.

"I asked the people, and everyone had heard of you but they didn't know when you'd come back, and sometimes... the blight would come before I reached the next village. I didn't get close to your trail until I asked the birds. The seabirds who you caught to repair that cape. They told me you were kind, that you didn't hurt them beyond plucking a few feathers. I wasn't even looking for the heart of Te Fiti. The ocean caught me during a storm one day, when I was just a few days from your fleet. I woke up on the beach and found the Heart next to me. That was when your niece--cousin's daughter--Hina found me. I made her forget, but she'll remember now. I'm sorry about that, too."

"You followed me to say you were sorry," Moana says, voice thick.

"Yes. I'd abandoned you. That's already a horrible thing, but even moreso when I did it. I knew how it felt, and I'd done it anyway. You were a child. I couldn't rest until I'd made up to you, or at least tried. I would have flown twenty more years, I would have taken the heart back on my own even--but I couldn't. So on I went to find you. I knew you'd think I just wanted to restore Te Fiti so I could shapeshift again. And... part of it was. So I didn't even say anything about it. But now Te Fiti is back, and your island is back, and my hook is back. And I am still sorry, Moana." He holds out the white feathers, each one of them pristinely groomed and bloodless.

She stands there, unable to speak.

"I can find more feathers, if you need more." She shakes her head. "Or I can find other things like pearls, or... what else is white? Cowries? Too heavy? Palm wood? No, that's boring--" Tears start streaming down her face, and Maui goes on desperately, "Or if you don't like these, I'll go traditional! I'll ask the 'apapane for red feathers instead, maybe that'd go better with black--"

She throws her arms around his neck and holds on tight. The feathers scatter onto the ground. "The feathers are fine," she insists through her sobs. "Thank you, Maui."

"Hey... you're welcome, all right?"

When she steps back, she sees a new tattoo on his chest--of Maui, head bowed in regret before a woman with streaming hair and a black right hand, mirroring the one with Te Fiti. She wipes her eyes (and glimpses Maui do so himself) before pointing to it. "You're apologizing a lot lately."

"Well, when you're a demigod and ruin the world, that deserves at least an apology."

Her mother and aunts and cousins gather up the feathers and sew a new headdress for her. When Moana looks at herself in the reflected waters of a pool, white headdress and black cape, the image hardly resembles Te Fiti anymore. Except--did her eyes turn green?

She kneels closer and stares into the water until the ripples clear, and she sighs in exasperation when she sees her eyes are as brown as ever.

 _Of course they're not green,_ she thinks. _I'm no goddess._

_I am Moana._


	7. Going Home

Maui takes his leave quietly, approaching Moana at noon, when the crowds in the village are the busiest. He asks her for a boat. Ma'ue, pecking at a few crumbs on the ground, flies off and comes back riding on Hina's shoulder. Hina waves to the demigod. "Hi Maui!"

"Hey, little sister!"

"I'm surprised you want a boat," Moana says. "I thought you were just going to fly off."

"I spent ten years flying around, Chief," Maui says. "Don't get me wrong, it's a great workout for my chest and arms, but I like having thumbs and swimming. Hina--you know how hard it was to give me water when I broke my wing, right?"

"Yeah!" Hina giggles. "You looked so funny trying to drink from a cup!"

"My hawk form is majestic and powerful!" Maui declares. Hina laughs and trails after them as Maui picks up the canoe with one hand. Then he picks up Hina and her gull and lets her ride on his shoulder and she shrieks with glee when he starts running. Moana runs after them, yelling for them to be careful, and the village parts around them without much thought. At the shore Maui gently slips Hina off his shoulder and kneels to accept a hug from the girl.

Moana gets onboard, pretending to inspect the rigging, and asks, "Why are you so nice to Hina? Other than the fact that she helped you."

"I knew a lot of Hinas," Maui says, and it sounds the same as when she asked about the tattoo on his back. Friendlier, but still distant.

Moana dimly remembers that in one of their stories, Maui was married and had children. She can't remember the name of his wife. But she won't ask now, not that he's about to leave. It seems like a painful one, and she doesn't want to test their tentative friendship so soon. Instead, she nods and ties off the sheet. "See you out there, Maui."

"See you out there, Moana."

Off he sails with the wind behind him. Moana jumps off and swims back to shore, and the ocean swells underneath her until she's back on the sand. Standing next to Hina, she holds her heir's hand as the girl waves to Maui with the other. The demigod waves back, and it's only until the boat is a tiny speck in the distance that Hina lets her hand fall. She sits on the shore and lets the waves lap against her feet, and she's sad for the rest of the day.

From then on, Hina's eyes always turn back to the water. She is distracted more, and Moana finds her on the shore wading until she's walked around the whole island. Then Hina finds a certain spot on the beach, a smooth platform of rock, and starts sitting there with her feet in the water. Moana teaches her to dance and this helps a little. But by the time Hina has learned enough to make up her own, her dances are always sad and it breaks Moana's heart.

Pele comes to the rock, but never to dance. She offers her sister the best desserts and candies she's made with all the new fruits on the island, but no matter how delicious they are, Hina's smile never stays. Hina often asks her sister to go sailing with her. Pele does, and has the same fun she has exploring the tunnels bored by lava underneath Motunui. But as soon as her feet touch the shore she heads gratefully home.

Now it's Hina who always wanders off. Tui and Sina give each other a look and a deep sigh whenever Moana has to come back with a sad little girl who was supposed to be doing chores or learning lessons.

\- - -

One day, while the adults are restoring homes and mending boats, bemoaning the lack of a certain demigod to speed things along, the children go out to play as they usually do.

The difference is, some of them do not come back at sunset. Including Hina and Pele.

Moana's family searches the island for the twins, going down half-remembered paths into caves and finding Pele, who was looking for Hina. She joins them. Before long, they come across other people searching for their children, and the village wonders if it is another curse so soon after the last one was lifted. But then Moana feels a spray of salt water and looks to the shore. She heads to the boats and finds all of the missing children, some playing in the water with their pets, but most of them resting on their family boats.

"Kahina-li'i!" Lahono takes her daughter up in a big hug even while she chides her. "You are your auntie's heir! You can't keep running off like this!"

"Hina, why didn't you say anything?" Moana asks, as other parents go to scold whoever worried them. "We thought something terrible happened!"

"I'm sorry, Auntie," Hina says. "But it's been so long, we've never stayed this long on an island. I miss the boats and Ma'ue misses the ocean and all the other animals are sad too. When are we going home?"

So the problem of home has come to her at last. With a heavy heart, Moana tells the children to go to their parents, and waits until every one of them has been tucked into bed before donning her black cloak. With signal fires instead of drums, she calls an urgent meeting.

\- - -

There are plenty of people who want to stay on Motunui.

She doesn't take it personally.

There are those who are too old to sail, those who get seasick even after ten years, children who have never felt comfortable at sea despite being born and raised on it. There are people who lost their whole families on the ocean from elders to children, and they wish to start fresh on Motunui. People find unclaimed homes with so much space that they cannot find the heart to return to their boats, always a little bit cramped. Oni is finally reunited with his plot of banana and coconut trees, grown wild but flourishing. His wife makes everyone laugh by pretending to be jealous and insisting she will go to sea without him. But she carries water to the farm with her husband, watches their oldest son climb coconut trees for the first time, and gives refreshing drinks of coconut water to everyone who passes by while she hums and mends clothes in the sunshine.

Inevitably, families begin to divide in truth--even Moana's.

Sina and Tui stay on, saying that they are more suited to chiefdom on land, and they will govern the people who want to stay. Moana again notices the gray in her mother's hair and the wrinkles on her father's face, and her heart aches. But she knows this is the right thing to do--the land restored by Te Fiti will be kinder to them than the ocean.

Everyone can see that Pele wants to stay. She loves wandering into all the caves she finds on Motunui, twisting caves made from flowing lava, once upon a time. She finds plants that even the medicine women have never seen, and insists on learning medicine so she can figure out what all the plants do. The medicine women warn her that the plants may be poisonous, and she laughs her fearless laugh.

"So are the pufferfish we caught once," she said. "And the people on those islands learned to cook them safe enough to eat. Mostly. I'll find a way to use them, good or bad."

The medicine women tut and shake their heads, but they do accept her as apprentice. And Moana smiles when she sees Pele diligently grinding dried leaves and mixing herbs for salves, chattering away with them instead of complaining. The girl is happy here, in a way she was not happy on the ocean. She is no longer restless and her mischief is contained.

But Hina has her duties as Moana's heir and she will not falter, and her sad eyes look towards the sea too often for her to think of anywhere else as home.

On different days, the twins come to Moana one after the other with the same request--they want to convince the other to stay with them, and could Moana please find a way to do it.

But there is no way this won't turn ugly. So Moana calls her parents and the twins' parents for dinner, and tells them what happened. The twins give each other identical looks of betrayal and dinner is quickly forgotten.

Sina speaks in her gentle voice of all the other families, even other twins, who have decided to go their separate ways. Pele and Hina shake their heads, turn to Moana and say, "Auntie, make her stay with me!" And then they start arguing about who should stay where. Moana sighs and points out that Pele cannot complete her new apprenticeship from afar, nor can Hina ignore her duties as Moana's heir. They wail and beg each other and finally, which everyone feared but expected, the fight turns physical.

"We spent all our lives on the ocean!" Pele shouts. "Why do we have to go back so soon? It's boring there!"

"It's not boring! I'm Auntie's heir so I have to go with her and learn how to be chief! It's important! You're just going to give up training with the medicine women anyway!"

"Hina!" Moana says. "Behave--"

"She started it!" Hina insists. "She always starts it--"

"You're wrong, you're wrong, _you're wrong!_ " Pele grabs a hank of Hina's hair and pulls.

" _Mommy!_ " Hina's seagull pin clatters to the floor as she fights to get out of her sister's grasp. Ma'ue screeches and flies out the window. "No, Ma'ue, come back!"

"I'm not _ever_ giving up!"

"Stop it, Pele!"

"Never, ever, ever!"

"Pele!" Lahono shouts, grabbing up her elder daughter. "Be civilized!"

Then Hina finally disentangles her hair and grabs her bowl of cold, untouched soup, and Sina orders, "Hina, put that bowl down!"

Hina dumps half of the soup on her sister before Tulo wrestles it out of her hand, spilling the rest of the soup on the table. Moana snatches a plate of chicken away before one of the girls can grab it, and Sina helps Lahono by taking one of Pele's flailing arms. Maholo wakes and starts crying in the chaos. Tulo asks, "Uncle, could you take the baby out for a second?"

"Of course." Tui picks up the boy and carries him out. He starts singing a song, and very quickly his voice and Maholo's crying fade into the distance.

"Girls-- _girls!_ " Sina yells, when Pele manages to hurl a sticky rice cake at Hina, despite both women holding her arms. "Stop that! Stop it now!"

"I'll stop when she changes her mind!" they demand, and immediately argue, "No! You have to stay with _me!_ "

"But if you stay with each other, one of you will always be unhappy!" Moana tells them. She tries not to plead, but desperation seeps into her tone anyway. "There's no other way besides splitting up, like others have decided! It's not going to be forever--"

"Fine!" Pele explodes, sitting back down with a thud and crossing her arms. "I'm staying here! Do whatever you want with your stupid bird and your stupid boat!"

" _You're_ stupid!" Hina screams, bursting into tears. When Moana tries to take her hand, Hina smacks away her arm. "You're the stupidest, meanest sister _ever!_ " She jumps up and runs out of the house. "I don't want to stay with someone who pulls my hair! I'll forget about you as soon as we leave!"

"No!" Tulo cries, running after Hina. "Don't run out at night, Hina! She didn't mean it!"

"Yes I did!"

After a few minutes of tense silence, Tui comes back with Maholo fast asleep on his shoulder. The former chieftain pokes his head in cautiously to see soup stains and bits of chicken and demolished rice cake all over the room.

"Is it safe?"

"Well." Sina sighs. "They changed their minds."

Lahono clears her throat. "Pele. We're going home. No dinner for the next week."

"Really?" Sina asks. "A week?"

"No cooking dinner, I meant." Sina nods as Lahono takes Maholo, then Pele's arm. But the girl won't budge from the table seat. "Pele-honua-mea Waialiki, if I have to drag you out of your auntie's house after all this racket--" Pele gets up. "Good night, Moana. Thank you, Auntie Sina and Uncle Tui." Lahono frowns when Pele refuses to speak. "Pele, thank your auntie _right now._ "

"Thank you, Auntie Moana!" Pele snaps. "Dinner was _nice!_ " A brief pause, and then she adds, "Even though you're the worst auntie ever--" At her mother's warning look, she corrects herself: "I mean you're the _best_ auntie ever, and I _don't_ hate you, and I _will_ talk to you again!" Lahono gives up for the day, and waves goodbye. Pele stomps out of the house after her mother. It appears that she's learned sarcasm from the grannies as well as medicine making.

Moana starts cleaning up the table, fighting tears. "That isn't how I hoped it would go."

"They're children," Tui tells her. He grabs a cloth and helps with the floor. "I'd be surprised if it _wasn't_ a mess."

"They love each other," Sina adds. "This was all because they both love each other and they didn't want to be separated. Just give them a little while to remember it." She pats Moana on the shoulder before taking down the wall hangings which were stained, and folding them into a pile for washing. She picks up Hina's hairpin and tucks it into her skirt.

\- - -

The twins don't speak to each other after that. It hurts Moana to see them so genuinely angry at each other this close to parting. But the entire village, who heard the fight or from others who did, assure her that it won't last and she just needs to wait.

So Moana prepares rations, fixes boats, watches the tides, and teaches Hina to do the same. They can take their time, now that the blight is gone. But in one month, the twins still have not spoken to each other, and the fleet cannot wait any longer. Moana sends word out that they will sail soon.

It is then that she looks at everyone in the caverns to find all of the adults going with her have tattooed their right hands heavily in black. She lifts her own right hand, staring at it. Maybe it's time for her to get a tattoo the traditional way. But what animal would she choose?

\- - -

When the time comes, on a tide between night and day, Hina and Pele avoid looking at each other. Then brothers and sisters and uncles start shifting away from each other, into two separate crowds, and Pele runs forward to her sister and throws her arms around Hina.

"I'm sorry for fighting!" they say at the same time.

"I shouldn't have pulled your hair," Pele sobs. "Your boat isn't stupid and neither is Ma'ue. I just said that because you were going and I didn't know what to do!"

"You're really smart and that's why you get into trouble a lot," Hina weeps. "And you're not mean either, you're just bored. And I shouldn't have thrown food at you and I'm not going to forget you and I'll make sure to be back soon!"

They braid their long hair and remove their hairpins, Hina's seagull of white abalone shell and Pele's black obsidian pin shaped like a teardrop. And in front of all the people, the twins take the shark-tooth blades from their belts and cut off their hair, sticking the pins in the cut end to bind them. They give each other the braids, and promise to send messages back and forth, and visit as often as they can.

On the moonlit beach, Moana stands in the middle of her people, land and sea folk alike.

She must be strong, so with her head held high and no tears, she announces, "We are leaving now. Pele-honua-mea and Kahina-li'i have cut their hair, and I say it is right for them and anyone else. This is a farewell. Who should not grieve? I know your sorrow, my people. But even this parting will not last forever. If you must sail for any reason, sail with us. We are your family--" She pauses as her throat fails, but her parents gaze back at her steadily. "We are your family. We will keep you safe on the great ocean."

"If you must make land," Tui responds, voice thick with emotion, "Land here, for this is your home too. It will always be your home."

Sina keens and throws her arms around Moana and Hina, and then Pele and the twins' parents burst into tears again, and soon the whole beach echoes with sobs and crying. After a long, long time in her parents' arms, Moana finally pulls away and takes Hina's hand. Chief and heir walk past siblings and cousins and parents who have taken the twins' example, exchanging locks of hair and braiding them carefully. People often stop to wave to their families, and Moana does not hurry them. She and Hina do the same thing, as often as they can.

They have some time.

But the tide must go out sooner or later.

When she finally unfurls the sail, Moana beats the drum to signal the start of the voyage.

Hina sits by the tiller with Ma'ue on her shoulder, tears still staining her cheeks. "I miss Pele, Auntie," she says. Motonui is still in view, but Moana does not begrudge her that. Hina combs her hair with her fingers, and out of habit continues combing air until she remembers it is short.

"I miss her too, Hina."

"And Auntie Sina and Uncle Tui. And Mom and Dad."

Hina sighs, and holds the obsidian hairpin to her chest. Before long, she's crying again, but trying very hard not to let Moana hear. Moana pretends not to hear it. She wonders if her parents knew when she cried, despite all she did to hide it. A blue glow rises from the drum, and Moana feels her grandmother's presence on the boat. Behind her, Hina stops sniffling, and heads into the cabin. When she comes out, she's washed and dried her face and Pele's hairpin is against her ear.

She has two pouches, one with dried seaweed and one with banana chips.

"Are you sure you want to leave your family?" Moana asks. "I named you heir just because I don't have children of my own. I can get married and have children and then you can go back."

"No, Auntie," she says. "I love the ocean like you. I wouldn't feel happy staying on Motunui forever." She holds out the pouch of banana chips to Moana.

"Thank you, Hina," Moana says. The banana chips are very sweet after ten years of seaweed and fish.

"You're welcome." Hina ties her snack to her waist, climbs down to the waterline, and checks the current. "The water's cold!" she calls. She comes back and beats the drum, calling loud and clear despite her soft voice: "Blue water!"

"Blue water!" the cry goes out.

And a flurry of activity goes out as Moana's people resume their trades. The water-bearers fill their great pitchers with seawater and reinforce the jugs filled at Motunui and make sure the salt is drying well. The tattoo artists make way to just outside the fleet where the water is calmest, accompanied by the scouting boats and the protective ring of warrior ships. The farmers fall behind, long lines of seaweed and kelp trailing behind them like dark ribbons in the water. Smoke rises from houseboats. Children play with their rays and dolphins and seabirds.

A hawk flies past, golden among the small flock of white seabirds. Moana waves at him until he lights on the mast and turns back into a human, to Hina's delighted shout.

"What?" Maui calls, hanging upside down with a grin. "Don't feel like killing me today, Chief? I'm right here! One giant, muscle-bound, and very handsome target!"

"Handsome?" Moana scoffs. "You're so ugly you need to steal other people's beauty." Maui gasps in mock outrage, changes back into a hawk, and flies off--but only to the edge of the fleet. Moana laughs hard, as hard as Pele when talking about poisonous plants or desserts.

"Auntie, look!" Hina shouts. Everyone's frightened for a moment until she says: "Look at that manta ray, Auntie! She's beautiful!"

Moana smiles. She doesn't have to look to see who it is. "I know her very well, Hina," she answers. "I'm busy right now, but you can go down to meet her."

Every now and then, she looks back in the direction of Motunui, towards the part of her family she has left behind. More often, she looks down where Hina and her great-grandmother Tala swim together, at her black right hand on the rudder, or up at the endless sky. She listens to the new songs of her people. She breathes the scent of salt spray, of astringent shark meat and thick kelp cooking. Her black cape streams out, mingling with her loose hair, and hiding the new tattoo on her back. It's red and painful, so she hasn't revealed it yet, but she knows it is the right one.

Maui flies above them, just out of reach of any spears. She can hear his laugh on the wind.

On the edge of her vision, she sees a glow--of ancestral boats responding to new captains, of ghostly figures watching over their descendants' children, giving strength to the warriors, or whispering hints of forgotten knowledge. Her grandmother was right. How could she not have seen it before? There is no place she can go without some part of her family nearby. And while Moana aches thinking of her parents, of Hina away from her twin sister, of the ten hard years spent at sea while Motunui was blighted, she still does not regret a single thing.

_I am home._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere around my fifth time watching Moana, I was haunted by what might have happened if Moana had gone home instead of sailing to Te Fiti right away. I immediately decided to take the opportunity to age Moana up for her final battle. I thought it would be a one-shot at most. Seven chapters and a lot of research later, it's finally done.
> 
> I am of Pinoy descent and the spirit of this was inspired by the Sama tribe of Mindanao, who traditionally live on boats or stilt-houses in the water. However, I didn't use a lot of specific cultural practices and I altered a lot of the ones I did use to fit the story.
> 
> The part after the battle where Moana is floating in the water unafraid to die is a direct reference to Whale Rider.
> 
> Pele-honua-mea and Kahina-li'i are Hawaiian gods. Pele is the famous volcano goddess. Kahina-li'i is actually Pele's mother, but as she is an ocean goddess, I used the opportunity to connect Hina with Moana on a spiritual level. Hina is a pretty common name (Sina is a variant), but also used by a lot of goddesses, including Maui's wife or his older sister. In this case, it's only his wife, as he had no connection with his mortal family in the Moana verse.
> 
> Cutting hair in grief is a fairly common practice to a lot of indigenous cultures, including ones in the Philippines.
> 
> The 'apanepane is a bird native to Hawaii and its red feathers were traditionally used for the clothing and headdresses of royalty. Of course, this changes in story to seagull feathers due to practicality.
> 
> There's a lot of folklore about twins, but the beliefs about Hina and Pele are specific to this story, as far as I can tell. In particular, Hina can see the true forms of shapeshifters, or invisible things, and she has a connection with the ocean shared with Moana. Pele can hear the language of the gods and has an affinity with fire.
> 
> The medicine women are based on the mostly female babaylan of the Philippines. They are spiritual leaders and shamans. Yes, it is significant that both twins are essentially leaders of their respective tribes.
> 
> The seaweed farming is practiced in Japan, Korea, and China, and in a stationary manner by sinking posts into the shore rather than trailing them on boats.
> 
> Desalination has been practiced since ancient Greece, but only in limited quantities and even in modern times it's either difficult and expensive, or very time consuming.
> 
> "You're so ugly you have to steal other people's beauty" is a reference to the Maori version of Maui, who was so ugly he stole his wife Rohe's beauty and she fled to the underworld.
> 
> The recipes described are either made up or too general to be attributed to any one culture--with the exception of two: Hanuiloke is a fictionalized version of ginataang halo-halo, a dessert soup from the Philippines made with coconut milk, the purple ube yam, other tropical fruits, and rice or tapioca balls. No cinnamon, though. And the poisonous pufferfish Pele talks about is fugu from Japan.
> 
> I have a couple of ideas for other stories set in this verse. What happened when Tui tried to burn the boats, and the mysterious voice who called him. Why everyone keeps mistaking Moana for Te Fiti. What happened to the last friendly village (which wasn't just starving). Something about Hina and Pele both becoming the leaders of their respective tribes.
> 
> Foremost on my mind is a series of horror one-shots inspired by all the gruesome terrifying bedtime stories and folkloric demons from the Philippines (and maybe a couple of others), taking place in Lalotai. It may or may not be set in this alternate universe.
> 
> Whether you started from the first chapter or just found out about this now, thank you so much for reading.


	8. Images

I made a moodset for the twins. It's also over here at [my tumblr.](http://leradny.tumblr.com/post/165097064493/the-wandering-years-a-story-by-leradny-moodset)


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